Harry Potter And The Hunger Games
by JDon987
Summary: Crossover between the Hunger Games and Harry Potter. Features Harry Potter characters in the Hunger Games universe. The 70th Hunger Games have arrived, who will be reaped and who will win?
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I don't own either Harry Potter or the Hunger Games**

 **Harry Potter and the Hunger Games**

Reaping day arrived in District 5 the same as every other year. The undercurrent of fear overtook the whole district as everyone reluctantly prepared themselves for the reaping ceremony. This was no different in a wealthy house, built on top of a safety equipment shop in the centre of town. However, in this house, the fear only really resided inside of one small boy who slept in the bath at his house.

This boy's name was Harry Potter and he had every right to feel nervous. He lived with his Aunt and Uncle who had never had any problems letting him know that he was not wanted. In fact, Harry suspected that he would have been kicked out of the house if he had not been able to provide the family with Tesserae. This only provided a meagre supply of grains and oil, but his family was nothing if not greedy and they barely fed him anyway so it was seen as a net positive. This Tesserae had likely saved his life and had definitely kept him from becoming homeless, but it also had condemned him to a higher chance in the reaping.

Harry lived with his Aunt and Uncle because his Mother and Father had died in a power plant accident where a machine overheated and emitted poisonous gas back when he just one years old. His Mother had been right by the machine when it happened and his Father had died trying to save her from it.

Harry had to get Tesserae for himself, his Aunt, his Uncle, and his cousin and as such, with this being his 6th reaping, he had 30 entries in the reaping ball. Given that district 5 was one of the wealthier districts in Panem, it meant that Harry had a better shot than most at going to the Hunger Games.

The reaping ceremony was only in a few hours' time and as such the whole district was getting ready. Harry and his family were no different with Dudley, Harry's cousin getting into a smart new shirt while Harry was left to wear Dudley's first reaping shirt- it was still too big.

Suddenly, Harry heard thundering footsteps approaching before his Uncle popped into his room. His Uncle was a beefy man with beady eyes and seemed to always have a purple vein throbbing out of his temple. He looked especially big as he towered over

"Listen here boy, if you get reaped today I don't want you embarrassing us, you hear me?" He asks.

"No Uncle Vernon." Harry replied.

"Good, because we don't want to be associated with an embarrassing crying wreck ok? It looks bad for us and people might talk." Vernon sternly lectured

"Yes, Uncle Vernon. If I get reaped I'll keep my head up." Harry said

"See that you do boy." Vernon glowered at him a moment longer before sneering at him and walking out the room.

Harry had no doubt that if he was reaped he would keep his head together. In truth he expected to be reaped, his life had never been a lucky one and it seemed unlikely that he would dodge the reaping with one of the highest odds. He wondered if it would even be a bad thing. He had no friends, no family, and no real reason to live instead of someone else.

Harry shook his head to clear his thoughts; it didn't matter what he thought, he couldn't control the reaping. Either he would be reaped or he wouldn't and then he would have to cope with whatever happened. He fixed up his shirt, tried to comb down his hair- complete waste of time- and headed down to the kitchen. He still had to earn his keep, even on reaping day, and there were dishes to be done.

He entered the kitchen to the sight of his Aunt Petunia fixing his Cousin Dudley's shirt. Dudley was a well fed boy, who even possessed a bit of a gut, something very rare in the districts. His mother was a skinny woman who still showed some signs of being well-fed. She also had a long neck with a horse-like face. She looked over at Harry like he was a piece of dirt when he entered the room.

"The dishes are in the sink, we let a little bit of breakfast for you on the bench." She said.

Harry walked over to the bench silently and got to work, saving the food for after. It was only a half a piece of toast anyway. He finally finished the dishes as the family were getting ready to leave and so had to have his toast on the way.

When they arrived at the town square, there were very few people around. The Dursleys' liked to get there early to show that they were better than others. Tardiness was one of the things the Dursleys' hated the most and they viewed those that arrived after them with distain. Harry registered with the Peacekeepers and then slipped away from Dudley to go stand by himself. No one was really around so he observed his surroundings. On the stage, the escort for District 5, Aurelia, was talking animatedly with Mayor Lupin about something that clearly wasn't interesting to him. There was no sign of any of the victors yet and the technicians- probably from district 5 themselves- were going over all the electronic equipment. Nothing much else was happening and so Harry looked away. The square was starting to fill now and Harry could see Dudley being reunited with his best mate Piers Polkiss. Harry decided to hide himself behind a group of boys just to be safe.

Twenty minutes later and everyone had arrived and the ceremony was ready to start. The mayor got up, looking as tired as usual to give the usual speech on why the hunger games existed. Harry tuned out, having heard about the districts failed rebellion and subsequent demolition of district 13 before, until the mayor got to the reading of districts past victors. There were 4 in all, only two of them still alive. The first of these was a middle aged man named Sirius Black and the other was a Woman named Nymphadora Tonks who had won 7 years ago. Despite being in his mid-thirties Black was still quite a handsome man and was reportedly quite popular in the capital. Tonks was also quite attractive and had appeared to have adapted to the Capitol fashions; changing her hair colour and style seemingly every month. Today she had shoulder-length pink hair and a couple of nose piercings for good measure. After the reading of the victors, the mayor introduced Aurelia to take over who promptly bounded onto the stage."

"Hello, everyone and welcome to the 70th Hunger Games. It's great to be back in district five for another year to select two brave and courageous tributes." She said in the shrill Capitol accent.

"Well let's get to it. Ladies first of course." She walked over to the bowl and reached into the bowl, coming out with a slip from somewhere in the middle. She walked back over to the microphone and announced:

"Susan Bones."

Harry winced, he knew that name. Susan was a quiet girl in his classes who was one of the nicest people around. She was not likely to take this well. Sure enough, Harry saw the girl wandering up slowly onto the stage, tears clearly in her eyes. She stumbled a bit on the stage before standing next to Aurelia. Amazingly, Aurelia managed to maintain her bubbly persona.

"Congratulations dear, and now onto the boys." She declared

She walked over to the boys bowl and thrust her hand in, deeper this time. She emerged with a slip and walked back over to the bowl and declared the tribute.

"Harry Potter."

Harry felt everyone turn to look at him. No one really liked him, but they all knew who he was. The weird cousin of Dudley Dursley, never talks to anyone, a troublemaker, dangerous. Harry knew the rumours and knew that most of the people round him probably thought he was the perfect candidate. Harry had been prepped for this moment for years, however, and knew not to panic. He raised his head high and calmly walked towards the stage. He looked at the people on stage to see their reactions. Susan was still crying, she probably hadn't even heard who was joining her. Aurelia was giving him an encouraging smile, clearly grateful that he wasn't crying about his face. Interesting though, were the faces of the mayor Remus Lupin and the victor Sirius Black. Both of their faces had gone completely white as they stared at him disbelievingly. Their gaze never wavered as he climbed the steps and took his place next to Aurelia. They only looked away when the national anthem played after Aurelia had announced them as the tributes of district 5 for the district.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N** Hey guys, thanks for the reviews they made me happy and i'm glad you like it. Though I make no promises about characters dying or not dying sorry haha.

They were led off to the justice building next to say their goodbyes. Unfortunately, Harry had no one to say goodbye to and so he mostly just spent his time pacing the floor. Susan must have had quite a few well-wishes though because it was about an hour before the peacekeepers came to escort him away.

The walk to the car was short and annoying with plenty of cameras around to record us. Harry was pleased to see that he looked disinterested, while Susan was somehow still crying, though admittedly less than before. The car turned out to be spacious and very smooth and before they knew it they had arrived at the station. They were again harassed by cameras on their way up to the train, but it was a quick journey, with Aurelia hustling them through and before they knew it they were on the train.

The train was the most spacious and amazing thing that Harry had ever seen and it only improved when he saw his room. It was easily twice as big as the Dursleys.

Looking around, Harry realised he had no idea what to do with so much room. Why would anyone need so much? He explored the wardrobe and drawers and found just clothes of all sizes before moving on to the bathroom. Shockingly, to Harry, there was no bath and instead had a shower, with a ludicrous amount of settings with no reference to what each one did. Otherwise, there was just a toilet and sink, nothing up high except the roof however, likely to ensure the tributes didn't get any ideas.

Having nothing else to do, Harry decided to try out the shower and figure out how it worked. The first setting covered him in glitter while the second caused what looked like fake snow to come out of the shower head. Harry shook his head and settled in. Eventually, he found a setting that was close to warm and spent the next 20 minutes scrubbing many of the previous settings off his body. He finally got out, dried off and dressed himself into a nice pair of black pants and a clean white shirt. He tried to deal with his hair but, as usual, it was not compliant with his wishes.

Harry had just finished dressing himself up when he heard Aurelia knocking heavily on his door. Apparently, it was time for dinner. He straightened out his clothes before heading out and down towards the dinner table. He was the last of the entourage to arrive and once he sat down they started tucking in. In front of him was Sirius Black, who was turned to his left, talking to Nymphadora Tonks about some capitol trend. Harry had a weird feeling that Black was watching him out of the corner of his eye. Tonks didn't seem to feel that she didn't have his attention and was laughing merrily at a joke of his. Opposite Tonks, and to Harry's right, Susan sat quietly, eating some sort of green soup. Harry looked at the food and found that he didn't recognise much of it. He reached forward to grab a small pile of tiny green balls. He also grabbed a flaky mince pie, bigger than any that you could find in district 5. He also piled on some potatoes, which were considered a delicacy even for a family as rich as the Dursleys and which Harry had never been able to try.

Harry tried his best, but he found that he couldn't finish even half of what was on his plate. He wasn't accustomed to having so much available to him and his stomach seemed to not be able to cope with such vast quantities. Throughout the meal, there was a small amount of small-talk, usually initiated by Black or Tonks but Harry and Susan were preoccupied by the food and so not much arose from these attempts.

Dessert was brought out next and Harry found a bit more space, but even then he couldn't eat much. Black recommended something called ice-cream, while Tonks animatedly praised a chocolate cake. He tried both and found them both incredible, though the orange chocolate chip ice-cream was his favourite.

Finally, everyone finished eating and they all sat back in their chairs, too stuffed to say anything. It was Harry who found his voice first.

"Who's going to mentor who?" Harry asked.

Tonks and Black looked at each other and then Tonks replied, "Well, that's up to you guys, normally I mentor the female tribute and Sirius mentors the male tribute, but if either of you have a preference that's fine. Do you want to change that?"

Harry looked over at Susan who shrugged, indicating that she didn't really mind either way. Harry shook his head and said, "No, I'm fine with Mr. Black."

Sirius winced at this, while Tonks seemed to smirk cheekily at him. "Please Harry, just call me Sirius. I'm not that old."

"Are you sure about that old man?" Inquired Tonks. "You're only a few years younger than my mom and she's ancient."

"You be quiet." Sirius warned, waving a finger in Tonks's direction. "Or I'll tell her you said that."

Tonks emphatically nodded her head with a faux-serious expression on her face before saying, "Yes sir, Mr. Black sir. I promise to be more respectful to my elders in the future."

Sirius shook his head and sighed loudly before mumbling something about 'little brats'.

There was a momentary quiet, before Aurelia stood up and announced that the reaping recaps were about to play and began to shuffle us all over to the sitting room where the reaping recaps would be playing. This was a spacious room with a large television set in the middle of the room, with couch to the left and two armchairs on the right. Harry chose a seat on a single armchair by himself, while Susan sat down next to Tonks while Sirius sat on her other side. Aurelia took the last armchair on the far right and turned the television on with the correct channel. It turned on with two commentators discussing the history of the hunger games before quickly shifting to district one.

As usual, two volunteers emerged from the rush to the stage. The female tribute was a reasonably attractive girl who smirked maliciously at the camera, but it was the boy that seemed to be the real threat. He was an attractive blond haired boy, probably the same age as Harry, with stony grey eyes. He had an almost regal aura about him, as though he thought he was better than everyone else. Beyond this, however, Harry could see the cunning and malice in the boys' eyes and he knew that this was someone that he would have to keep an eye on. Harry filed the face away for future reference as the scene skipped to the district two town square. As usual two beefy tribute volunteered, tribute Harry would prefer to avoid fighting but who appeared to be slightly lacking in the mental department.

The rest of the districts flew by, district four produced another very big, albeit unintelligent looking boy and a crying girl who did not appear to have trained a day in her life. His own district played out mostly as he remembered though he noted that he looked significantly more panicked than he had wanted to.

Districts six to eight seemed uninteresting, the girl from district 9 seemed unimportant as well but the ginger-haired boy from the district looked legitimately strong for an outlying district. District 10's girl had a cunning look about her, even if physically she seemed unimpressive. Finally, District 11 and 12 seemed resigned to their deaths already and had no memorable impact on Harry whatsoever.

The recaps finished with a bit of banter between the commentators about who they thought were the favourites and then it changed to a dog salon commercial and the screen went blank. Sirius stood up clapped his hands.

"Right, well it's getting late so why don't you kids head off to bed." He declared.

Harry felt legitimately tired and, judging by the yawns being made by Susan, she was too and so we both went off without any complaint. We said 'goodnight' in the hallway before going into our respective rooms for the night. Harry quickly undressed slid into a bed for the first time in memory. He was asleep before his head hit the pillow.

It felt like minutes later that Harry was awoken by a thudding on his door and on the roof. He could barely hear Aurelia's voice over the torrential downpour outside. Apparently the heavens had decided to open overnight and try to flood the land. Harry doubted its attempts would be fruitful but could admire its enthusiasm. Harry still couldn't make out what Aurelia was saying but assumed it was something to do with breakfast and so got out of bed and quickly got changed before heading out to the dining room. When he arrived, he noticed that Tonks wasn't there yet. Sirius looked up and smiled at him and gestured for him to sit down.

"Aurelia's just going to collect Tonks, she was always a late riser, since she was a kid." Sirius said.

Confused by Sirius's implications, Harry asked: "Did you know her before her games then?"

Sirius Sirius's smile dropped a little as he said: "Yea, she's my favourite cousins' daughter. Seems like our family hasn't had much luck with the odds, my younger brother was reaped as well when he was eighteen."

Sirius didn't have to say anymore, his brothers' absence from the table explained exactly how that had gone. It wasn't an unusual thing either. Family of victors seemed to be reaped with unlikely regularity. Enough that even the Capitol commentators had taken notice, lamenting the poor luck of the families of the victors.

Still, Harry couldn't say anything about that, especially on a Capitol train and so settled for saying, "I'm sorry about that."

"Don't worry about it, it's not your fault." Sirius replied. "Besides, I still have Tonks."

Harry nodded and started to eat a piece of toast, he was a small kid and he doubted he could eat much, but he still vowed to eat at least two pieces. About ten minutes later Aurelia arrived, dragging a sleepy-looking Tonks behind her. Her hair was still very pink, and the bright colour seemed to brighten the mood of the whole room. She sat down next to Susan, who had been sitting there very quietly and poured herself some coffee.

"Wotcher guys, don't stop talking on my account." She said through a yawn.

Sirius smiled, a real one again and said, "Actually, I was waiting for you before I talked about what they should expect when we arrive at the Capitol."

Tonks nodded at this took a large drink of coffee before replying, addressing both Harry and Susan. "Basically, you need to channel your inner child and just do what they say. Even if they look like overgrown birds or cats."

"Great way to explain it Tonks. That won't worry them." Came Sirius's sarcastic response.

Tonks nodded at this, putting an incredibly earnest face. "They should be worried, it's a horrific process. Maybe not for Harry because he's a male, but Susan will be raw by the time they're finished."

Sirius rolled his eyes and gave a barking laugh. He turned to the tributes who looked a bit wide-eyed after this proclamation. "She's joking, you're probably not going to enjoy the process but it's not _that_ bad. Just do what they tell you and don't complain. You want to make a good impression on them, you never know whether they'll be interviewed by reporters and sponsors only want to hear good things about their tributes."

They ate together for another ten minutes, making small talk until Aurelia stood up and clapped her hands. "Right, we'll be in the Capitol in about an hour, so I want you to go get ready, take a shower and find some nice clothes."

Harry left to go to his room, Susan wandering about just behind him. For Harry, the freshening up process took about 20 minutes, with a quick shower and then some presentable clothes. He didn't even bother trying to comb down his hair. That seemed like a task that might be outside of even the Capitol stylists' powers.

When he arrived back in the dining room, he found Aurelia, Tonks and Sirius still sitting there, just talking quietly between themselves. They, unlike Harry, had been to the Capitol before and so were not particularly interested in the outside scenery. Harry, on the other hand, was very interested and so found his feet carrying him to the window that overlooked the passing terrain.

It was like another world to Harry. District five was an urban district and so he had seen very little trees or even grass. What he was passing-by now however, was just wild, untamed nature. Grass grew to knee high and weeds spouted out all over the place. The bushes seemed to extend forever, and the trees grew impossibly tall. Harry was even sure he saw a bear at some point.

Harry stood there for some time, transfixed by the amazing sight. It was only when the train passed through a tunnel that Harry looked away. At some point Susan had joined him in staring out of the train and she looked just as amazed as he did. Sirius and Tonks both had indulgent smiles on their face while Aurelia just seemed to be oblivious to it all.

"Not like district 5 at all is it?" Sirius asked.

Harry shook his head. "Not at all, it's amazing." He replied.

"I had the same reaction before my games. It takes a while to get old."

Harry privately didn't think he could ever get tired of such scenery, but just nodded in agreement instead.

Sirius looked like he knew exactly what Harry was thinking, but just said, "You're about to get your first sight of the Capitol in a second. You don't want to miss it."

Harry turned back to the window just in time to see the train emerge from the tunnel and came face-to-face with the city.

The television clearly hadn't lied about the aesthetic beauty of the Capitol. Even in the pouring rain, there was something magnificent about it. The way the buildings towered over the people; so much bigger than those in district 5, and the way that the rain didn't seem to affect the actions of the people. Even in this weather, Harry could sense there was an atmosphere that reigned in this city. Created, probably, by the lack of worries that the citizens had. The people seemed happy, carefree and the city reflected this. Even the lake seemed amazing, untameable yet tranquil at the same time.

Harry felt that he could have liked this place if he wasn't here to fight to the death.

"Oh, I just love that first image of the Capitol, don't you?" Aurelia squeaked excitedly. "You don't see this back in your district, do you?"

Harry nodded in agreement and watched as the train arrived in the city and started pulling into the city. He was surprised to see the amount of people that had braved the weather to wave in the tributes. While not packed, the station looked comfortably over half capacity and the people looked genuinely excited, waving animatedly at what they must have recognised to be a tribute train. Sirius's comment about wanting to make a good impression rattling around in his head, Harry put on his best smile and waved back. Catching Susan's questioning look he shrugged and gestured for her to do the same. Hesitantly, she joined him as the train stopped signalling the end of one journey and the start of another.


	3. Chapter 3

_**A/N Hey guys thanks for the reviews, I'm glad to hear that you're enjoying it**_

 _'Tonks is',_ Harry thought as he had yet more of his hair ripped off him ' _an absolute genius'._ He had been there an hour already and yet he still had more hair that needed to be removed. His embarrassment about being naked had faded somewhat over the hour and all he felt now was annoyance. Still, he had stuck to Sirius's advice and kept quiet, not making any comments and so far it seemed to be working. The three members of his prep team seemed to be happy anyway. They had complimented him a few times so far for not whinging.

"OK, just one more clump of hair to wax, hold still." This comes from Junia, who Harry had at first glance mistook for a giant cat. She has fake whiskers on and a weird facial structure, which gave an impression at first glance, at least to Harry, of a cat. She then proceeded to rip off the final strip, before smiling at Harry at congratulating him on not making a big fuss.

"See, that wasn't so bad now was it? That's the hard part over with."

Harry felt like he might get out of this room alive after all, until Martius, a man with spiky pink hair and gold square tattoos said "Now we can get all that dirt out of your skin."

Apparently getting all the dirt out meant scrubbing someone's skin raw for a few hours and Harry felt like he had had two years taken off him by the time they were finished. Surprisingly, they seemed to be uninterested in fixing Harry's hair. Instead, Martius stepped back, gave harry a quick look-over before smiling.

"Well, I think you're ready for Macerius now." He chirped.

With this, the three of them skipped happily out of the room, like a group of dogs returning to their owners and Harry was left there, still naked, to wait for this Macerius person. His skin burned all over as the air conditioning hit where he had been scrubbed all over and where his hair had all been waxed off. This general feeling of discomfort was not helped by the fact that he was stuck sitting on a cold steel table. Like everything else in the room, the table was immaculately clean and Harry felt in full force, just how different this place was from district 5.

This realisation was probably the main reason that Harry didn't initially notice his stylist, Macerius walk in. It wasn't until the man gave a slight cough that Harry looked up. Macerius was a man of average height, whose age Harry couldn't even begin to guess. Harry had seen this man many times on the television and so he knew this man was not a novice. Macerius's face contained no wrinkles and his hair was bright green. He had plenty of tattoos, of all colours, on his body and his clothes looked to be very new which Harry would bet they were the latest trend. There was nothing to suggest that this man was a day over 30, but something about the man made Harry believe that in reality the man was much older. There was something about this man's appearance that seemed forced. Like someone in denial, who was trying so hard to retain his youth.

Presently, Macerius had a smile, which seemed to be a bit too big as he watched Harry.

"Hello, Mr Potter. I am your stylist, Macerius." He said in a tone that clearly conveyed how much of an honour it was for Harry to have him as his stylist.

"Hello, it's nice to meet you. I'm Harry." Harry replied.

"Yes, I saw your reaping Mr Potter. I have to say I was pleased that I am not burdened with one of those cry-babies that the outer districts seem to regularly produce. I had expected the same from your district."

"Uh, thank you. Have you not been with our district for long?"

"Oh heavens no. I've been the district 1 stylist for many years. Now, however, one of the new up-and-comers had been promoted and so I have been assigned to your district for this year." Macerius said, failing to hide his disgust at this demotion.

Harry stayed silent, not knowing what to say. Macerius put his smile back on and continued.

"No matter, there are some good aspects to changing district. I have the chance to branch out a bit, be a bit more creative."

Harry smiled politely and asked the pressing question that was going through his head. "Can I put a robe on?"

Macerius waved a hand dismissively at this. "Of course, I already know what we're going to do for your outfit."

Harry put on his robe, revelling at the protection for his skin from the air cold air. He looked up at Macerius and asked. "So what are we doing?"

"Well, Julia, the female's stylist, and I have worked together on this and we've come up with an idea that should get the crowd to notice you. Let me ask you, what do you first think of when you think of electricity or power?"

"Umm, I'm not sure. Laboratories and factories?"

Macerius laughed at this. "Ah that's because you are from the districts. Here in the Capitol we think of such things in more symbolic ways."

"Oh, so like a windmill or something?"

Macerius gives a small smile and walks over to his wardrobe, still talking.

"Sort of. Though our idea is something a bit more memorable than that."

A few hours later, Harry finally arrived at the chariot for the opening ceremony, where he found Susan already there. She was solemnly looking around at the other chariots, half of which were full. She was dressed up the same as Harry, and looking just as weird. Harry hoped that Macerius was correct when he had assured him that it would look a lot more impressive when it was all lit up.

Harry cleared his throat to announce himself and tried to smile encouragingly at Susan when she looked at him.

"So, what do you think about the outfit? Should be good eh?" Harry asked.

Susan shrugged and looked away and Harry decided to just let it be. He also looked around the holding area that they were in. There were 12 chariots in a row, with district 1 going first. There were also plenty of peacekeepers to oversee proceedings. The only other people that seemed to be hovering around were socialites who seemed to be having the time of their lives. Harry assumed that this was some sort of privilege to be this close to the tributes.

Looking around, Harry could see other tributes were just as bored as him. The careers were all there, talking amongst themselves at the district 2 chariot, the girl from 4 conspicuously alone at the district 4 chariot in front of Harry and Susan. District 7 seemed to be watching the careers with wary eyes and district 8 were slumped in their seats, completely uninterested in anything around them.

The only other tributes in the area were the district 9 tributes. The strong-looking ginger boy was stroking the horse's mane in front of him while talking almost cheerfully chatting away to his district partner. There was a mischievous aura about the boy which the girl, while still scared, seemed to be responding to. Harry watched them chat for some time and probably would have continued to do so had he not been interrupted by a voice to his left.

"Hey 5, enjoying your last few days alive?"

Harry turned to see the boy from 1 standing there, smirking at him. The boy had seemingly gotten bored of the career conversation and had come over to taunt them.

Harry stared back at the boy before responding sarcastically. "Not really, it's all a little boring at the moment to be honest. How about you?"

The boys smile remained, but his eyes narrowed slightly. His grey eyes stared out, assessing Harry. "I'm fine 5, but then I won't be dead in a few days. Thought it would be polite to introduce myself to my victims. You'll be one of my first."

Harry surprisingly felt little fear at this threat, despite the boys' likely proficiency at killing.

"That's nice, I'll be sure to remember to be scared."

"You should, though I doubt you're worth targeting. You'll probably accidently blow yourself up before the countdowns finished."

"Probably, I mean I don't have all that fancy training you guys get. Is that one of the important lessons in district 1? How to count to sixty?"

"No, we usually learn how to kill the weaker tributes in entertaining ways. I'll be sure to share that lesson with you in a few days."

"Good to know 1, maybe you should worry about that when we're in the actual arena. Might want to go back to your buddies now, they look a little lost without you." Harry turned to the rest of the careers, who were watching the exchange, and gave them a sarcastic wave.

The boy smirked at Harry. "Maybe I should. Make sure to watch your back 5." With that the boy turned and walked back towards his own chariot.

Harry looked around and noticed the boy from 9, still talking to his partner, had been watching the entire exchange. When he noticed Harry staring back at him, he gave an amused smile before turning to face his partner.

"You really shouldn't antagonise them, they can back up their threats." Susan piped up to Harry's right.

Harry shrugged. "It doesn't matter really, either way they'll try to kill me. I just don't want to let them intimidate me. Especially that brat from 1."

Susan looked unconvinced, but then just shrugged and went back to looking around at the district 7 tributes. Soon after, Macerius came over, accompanied by a young woman who must have been Julia. He had some sort of switch in his hands and was looking excited.

"So, are you guys ready? The ceremony is about to begin. I'll wait until you're clearly out of the stables before pressing the switch. Just remember to smile and wave. Any questions?"

Harry shook his head, as did Susan and both Macerius and Julia smiled at this.

"Good, then I want you both to just relax and enjoy this. The ceremonies starting, good luck."

With that, they were gone and Harry could see that they were correct in that the front doors had opened and the district one chariot had started to move. Harry could see the boy, with a full smile on waving at the crowd; the girl beside him doing the same. The crowd seemed to be lapping them up as well, if the noise was anything to go by. Next were the huge tributes from district 2, who seemed to merely scowl at the crowd, flexing their muscles for everyone to see. District 3 and 4 were next and they too got a cheer from the crowd. The closer Harry got the more he could appreciate just how loud the cheering was. He could hear nothing but the crowd by the time he reached the exits.

The cheers of the crowd seemed to die down initially as Harry and Susan exited the stables. There was polite applause at first, but Harry could practically hear the confusion in the crowd as to why they had no costumes. Then suddenly a blinding light emerged from all around him. It was so bright that Harry struggled to keep his eyes open. After a few seconds his eyes adjusted and Harry turned to Susan to see how their costumes looked.

Susan had now been lit up, whereas before she had been a weird dark shape she now seemed to be an attack from the heavens. The hundreds of bulbs that covered her costume had been ignited to make her seem like a lightning bolt. Harry could see that Macerius and Julia had been strategic in their design in that the lights would brighten and then dim in a downward pattern so as to give the appearance that it was constant lightning attacks, always crashing down to the ground in a striking effect.

Harry could see that the same thing was happening on his costume on the big screen and he turned to see the crowd. Their cheering had now considerably risen back to around the level it was for district 1 and Harry could hear some people chanting his name.

'Harry! Harry! Harry! Harry!'

Harry smiled gratefully at the crowd, waving enthusiastically at as many of the people as he could. It was quite easy for him to lose himself in the moment. He felt on top of the world. No one had ever paid him any attention and yet here he was, the main attraction for tens of thousands of people. The ride through the city seemed to take no time, Harry happily waving to the crowds, all of whom seemed excited to wave back. Even Susan seemed to get into the spirit, waving and blowing kisses with at least some enthusiasm. In no time, they had reached President Riddle's Mansion waiting for the president's speech to be delivered from the balcony, with the district 5 costumes illuminating the area.

The president gave it a minute for the crowd to relax before stepping forward onto the platform in the president's box. The president was quite an old man, who still had dark thin hair. He was very tall and also extremely thin, almost looking like a skeleton. His most distinctive feature however, was that he had had his nose thinned down to the point of almost non-existence, with just two silts used as nostrils. This, along with his narrow eyes, gave the impression of a snake.

As with every year, the president gave a speech thanking the tributes for their bravery and sacrifice and how the Hunger Games had strengthened and united their nation. Harry quickly tuned it out, looking up at the screen instead. The cameras seemed to be unsure as to where to look, with it switching between the president, Harry and Susan, district 1, and a few others. Harry noted though, that it seemed to be them and 1 who were getting the most attention, although that could be because the light from their costume was reflecting off the jewels on 1's costume, making it seem like there was a golden aura surrounding them.

Before long, the speech was over and the chariots were on their way, this time to the training centre where we will spend the coming days. Harry and Susan smiled and waved the whole way back, until they entered the centre. Sirius and Tonks, along with Macerius, Julia, and Aurelia came quickly over to congratulate the two of them. All of them looking visibly excited.

"Well done." Said Sirius. "You were one of the stars of the show."

"Screw that, you were brilliant." Exclaimed Tonks. "Only those district 1 brats were even close to you."

Harry smiled and turned to look at the district 1 group. They too looked happy with the way things had gone, although the boy was watching Harry's group. When he noticed Harry looking, he smiled coldly at them, his eyes promising retribution. Harry just shook his head, though Susan looked a bit worried.

Perhaps Sirius also saw this, because they were quickly shuffled off to the elevator to go up to their designated floor. Being on the fifth floor, the elevator ride was short but sweet and soon they were being introduced to their rooms. Impossibly, these rooms are even bigger than those on the train. They also possessed about a hundred gadgets that Harry couldn't even begin to understand and a personal mouthpiece that Aurelia says is used to order food instantly to your room.

Aurelia left him to scope out his room, telling him that dinner would be ready soon. Harry had a bit of a play with many of the gadgets but couldn't figure them out. Instead, he decided to have a quick shower before dinner, sticking to the same setting that he had found on the train. Harry had just left the shower when he heard Aurelia calling him to dinner.

Dinner turned out to be an enjoyable and festive affair. Everyone present were content to relax and be happy at how well the day had gone. Macerius in particular seemed pleased with the splash he had made and seemed to be sure that it would allow him to be promoted back to a career district while Sirius and Tonks were laughing about how annoyed the career mentors had looked at having the attention taken away from their tributes. Even Susan seemed to be smiling and having a good time, though she was still quite subdued.

All too soon the dinner was over and everyone shuffled off to the sitting room to watch the recaps of the ceremonies that were being broadcast. It was clear from the start that the announcers, along with the crowd, loved the district 1 tributes. Their attractive looks, along with their flashy outfits meant that they were traditionally a favourite in the Capitol and this year was no different. This year though, it was clear that district 5 was right there with them. The commentators were full of praise for the costume, for its innovative nature and for the visual effect that it created in contrast to the dark sky. The other districts were given some obligatory discussion, but it was clear who the Capitol's favourites were. After the post-ceremony analysis and commentary, the recaps ended with an overhead shot of all of the tributes at the president's mansion where you can clearly see the illuminated figures of Harry and Susan before the television goes dark. Sirius clapped his hands and turned to Harry and Susan to address them.

"Well done, you've definitely got the attention of the crowd." He says. "Now, you've got the first day of training tomorrow so be ready for that. I want you both to be here early tomorrow because you'll have a meeting with your mentors before going down to the training rooms, Harry with me and Susan with Tonks."

Tonks smiles at this "You guys will need to be ready tomorrow, so you'd better go get some sleep." She says, politely dismissing them.

Harry and Susan obliged with this and headed off towards their room. Harry isn't sure about Susan, but he's absolutely exhausted. Indeed, it seems to take him mere minutes after going to bed to drift off into a surprisingly peaceful slumber


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N Hey everyone, thanks for the reviews, it's good to see that people like the story. I don't mid if anyone uses any of my ideas, though I don't really think I've done anything very different from others. I also won't be publishing a list of all the other tributes names. Mostly because it I think it's unrealistic for Harry to bother to learn all of his competitors names, like how Katniss didn't know the names of most of her competitors. Thanks again for the reviews and I hope you enjoy this chapter.**

When Harry got to the dining room the next day he was surprised to see that none of the others were there yet. Only a young male servant was there, overseeing the food. When Harry asked if it was OK to start eating, the boy merely nodded. It was not too much longer that the others arrived and everyone engaged in small talk. Sirius and Tonks, it seemed, were getting themselves ready to go to sponsor meetings. Aurelia was discussing in depth about how busy her day would be, organizing interviews for the mentors and stylists, while the stylists seemed to be relaxed, with no real responsibilities until the day of the interviews. In contrast to this, Susan and Harry barely spoke throughout the meal, pent up with nervous energy. It was a relief to Harry, at least, when breakfast ended with Sirius announcing that Harry needed to meet with him before heading down to training.

Sirius and Harry decided to meet in Harry's room to discuss how to deal with training. Sirius sat on a nearby chair, while Harry sat on the bed. Sirius got straight to the point.

"So, Harry. What are you good at? What are your skills?" Sirius asked.

Harry gave this some thought. What were his skills? He was a decent student at school, though he had to hide it from the Dursleys. He had never been strong, something that Dudley had always reinforced. He had spent much of his life successfully running from his cousin and his gang though, so he supposed that he was pretty fast.

"Um, I'm not sure. I'm pretty small so I won't be able to win any fights." Harry replied.

"That's OK, there's more than one way to win the games. You must have some skills, something your better at than most people?"

"Well…. I am pretty quick and I'm good at dodging. I have to get away from Dudley quite often at home."

Sirius frowned at this. "That's good, speed can be important. Is there anything else?"

"Not really. I don't get the worst grades in the class, but I'm no genius."

"OK, I think we can work with this. Just let me think for a second." Sirius stated.

Harry sat there quietly waiting, while Sirius was thinking. It only took a few minutes before Sirius clapped his hands and looked at Harry.

"OK, I think I've got the basics down. You won't be able to win close fights generally, right?" Harry nodded in agreement at this. "OK, then obviously you'll need to get a decent grasp on a long distance weapon. That can wait for tomorrow however." Sirius continued.

"The careers will be all over the weapons stations today, looking to intimidate everyone. So I want you to work on the survival stations. Focus on the knot-tying station and the edible foods station. They're essential. Also look at how to start a fire and how to build shelter. Just make sure you get your head around the survival stations, got it?"

Harry nodded, the plan seemed better than anything else he could think of. He had no real desire to go near the careers anyway, so he was glad he had a reason to avoid them. With the meeting over, he and Sirius left to go back to the dining room. It seemed that Tonks and Susan hadn't yet returned from their meeting and Aurelia who was waiting to escort them down to the training room seemed to be getting impatient. After another five minutes or so, with Aurelia on the verge of a meltdown, Susan finally emerged. With a sniff of disapproval, Aurelia gestured for them to follow her and made her way towards the elevator to go down to the training rooms.

The first thing that struck Harry was just the incredible size of the training rooms. There were so many stations and an incredible amount of space that it seemed like you could fit another 24 tributes if necessary. Most of the other tributes were already there it seemed and were already gathered around a tall athletic-looking dark skinned woman. Harry went and stood next to the district 7 tributes, on the opposite side of the careers. About five minutes later, the final tributes arrived and the trainer started to give a speech regarding the different stations. Harry took the chance to evaluate his fellow tributes. As expected, the majority of them were bigger than him, even the girls. The careers looked big this year, especially district 2 and the boy from district 4. On the whole, being this close to his fellow tributes felt quite daunting to Harry as the reality of the situation really began to sink in.

The speech ended and the tributes quickly walked off to a station. Harry was left there alone, still in the middle, watching the other tributes. Most of them had wandered off to the survival stations, except the careers, who had claimed the weapons stations. The two from district 2 were using maces, swinging them happily at defenseless dummies. The boy from 4 had completely ignored the weapons altogether and instead was practicing his hand-to-hand wrestling against a trainer. The girl from 1 was expertly using the bow and arrow, hitting the bulls-eye almost every time. Lastly, the boy from one was practicing his sword-fighting against the trainer responsible. The boy was moving impossibly fast and with very precise strokes. The trainer looked quite overwhelmed, constantly backpedaling before being easily disarmed. The boy gave the trainer a sneer before mockingly bowing to him and kicking the trainer's sword away.

"He's a right prat, that one isn't he?" Came a voice behind Harry.

Harry jumped at the unexpected voice. He turned around and found himself face-to-face with the ginger-haired boy from district 9, who was still looking at the boy from 1 with an expression of disgust. Harry nodded his head warily in agreement, not sure what to make of the boy. The boy either didn't notice or didn't care about Harry's unease because he continued on.

"Well, he is. Thinks he's better than the rest of us. Just because he gets training for the games."

Harry found himself agreeing with this. "Yeah, he seems to already have crowned himself the victor. He was telling me all about it at the opening ceremony."

The boy smiled at this. "Well, obviously you should be grateful that such a great man even deigned to talk to you. Did you bow down and kiss his feet?"

"Unfortunately not. He says he's planning an eventful death for me so I must have made a bad first impression." Harry replied.

"That's a shame. I'm Ron by the way. Ron Weasley." The boy introduced himself.

"I'm Harry. Harry Potter." Harry responded. They shook hands.

The boy's name was ringing a bell for Harry and it only took another few moments for it to click. If there was one thing in the world that Harry knew about, it was the hunger games. The Dursleys loved watching the games every year, entranced by the violence and gore. Harry was expected to provide them with food during these times and so had seen his fair share of hunger games. This was why he was able to recognize the boy's name.

"You're related to Bill Weasley, aren't you? The victor of the 61st games?" Harry exclaimed.

Ron sighed heavily. "Yeah, that's me. The odds don't seem too good in our family. I'm the third in our family to be reaped, my brother Charlie was reaped for the 63rd."

"That's the same as what happened to my mentor, Sirius Black. Seems to be a theme with the family of victors." Harry said.

Ron looked around warily and Harry realized that had been a pretty risky comment to make. "Yea I guess some families don't have much luck." He said loudly.

"Yea, I guess so." Harry agreed quickly and louder than usual. There was a brief silence before Ron continued on a new topic.

"Well then, Harry. What did your mentor tell you to work on?"

"He mostly wanted me to focus on survival stations today. What did yours want you to do?"

"Pretty much the same. I guess great minds think alike."

"Suppose so."

"Well, we may as well train together. I'd be pretty bored by myself."

"Fair enough, which one do you want to visit first?"

"Let's try the rope tying station, the trainer's looking a bit lonely."

Sure enough, the trainer seemed almost surprised to see visitors at his station. They worked on rope-tying until lunch, both content to stay. Harry was a bit of a natural at this and quickly learned how to set rabbit snares before learning a basic trap for his competitors. The trap would thrust someone into the air by his leg if done right, but would be easy to escape from. Ron wasn't quite as gifted but had a passable attempt at a snare down before lunch arrived.

Lunch was enjoyable enough for both Harry and Ron. They were the only ones, other than the careers, not sitting alone before the girl from 10 came and sat next to them. She introduced herself as Tracey Davis and explained that she thought it was too boring to sit by herself. The three of them sat, talking about their lives back in their districts. Ron worked as a harvester, which was a big reason for his strength. Apparently, his family weren't allowed to live with his victor brother so he had to do some work to bring in a bit of extra money. Tracey worked as a milker at her parent's farm. The conversation moved on to their competitors before lunch was finished, with the three of them agreeing that district 1 was the one to watch.

Tracey drifted off after lunch to work on rope-tying and Harry and Ron decided to first tackle the edible foods section. Harry seemed to be pretty good at this also, and was quickly able to identify the basic edible plants and which ones to avoid. Ron did OK at this also, though he sometimes got muddled up. After the edible foods section, they tackled many of the other survival stations, with middling success. Ron turned out to be brilliant at building a shelter and starting a fire, while being decent at camouflage. Harry was awful at starting a fire but great at climbing, due to his size.

Often, while training Harry felt the boy from one watching him, consistently evaluating his and Ron's skills. This was in contrast to the other careers who seemed to be perfectly content in playing with the weapons all day. Harry was a little unnerved by this. The boy had shown amazing talent at the sword fighting station, and more than adequate skills at other weapons stations. He also seemed to have a cautious, analytical nature that most career tributes seemed to lack which seemed worrying and made him someone to watch out for.

Harry and Ron finished the day at the hammock making station. This seemed like a pointless station to Harry because he couldn't figure when he would have the need to make a hammock in the arena. This was lucky, because he turned out to be terrible at it. Conversely, this turned out to be Ron's best station. Harry suspected that this was because it gave him the opportunity to relax after whining for the hour beforehand about how sore his feet were getting. Indeed, Ron celebrated his achievement by lying in it for the last 20 minutes, laughing at Harry's awfully embarrassing attempts at constructing one.

Finally, the head trainer, Atala, came around to say that the day was finished, Harry and Ron made their way over to the elevator, bidding farewell to each other once arriving at Harry's level. Harry quickly wandered off to his room to clean himself up before heading to dinner.

Dinner turned out to be a busy affair, with both Tonks and Sirius querying Susan and Harry on how the day had gone. Susan had tried to work on the weapons, to little effect apparently and had spent the day on her own. She seemed to be disheartened, and didn't eat much the whole meal. Sirius was intrigued to hear that Ron had come up to Harry and told Harry to keep training with him. Allies could be incredibly useful if they could be trusted and it would do Harry well to maintain the relationship. He also seemed concerned about the boy from one. Susan backed Harry up in saying that the boy was clearly the leader of the careers. Apparently, the boy had taunted her while she was working on knife throwing about how she would die on the first day. Sirius and Tonks both advised them to watch their competitors to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses.

The stylists were also at the dinner, although they had little to add to the conversation. Macerius seemed to still be content with his costume design, which apparently still had the Capitol buzzing. Julia was no better, and she and Aurelia spent the evening gossiping about the latest fashion trends in the Capitol. Finally, the dinner finished and Harry and Susan were dismissed for the night. The day had taken its toll on Harry and he found himself falling asleep almost instantly, once in his bed.

The next two days of training passed quickly, though they went quite well. Ron and Harry spent the first morning refreshing their survival skills. They especially worked on the rope-tying station, figuring that setting traps would make life in the arena a little easier. Tracey joined them once again for lunch though this time the majority of the conversation was taken up by Ron talking about his family. Apparently, he was one of seven kids which seemed incredible to Harry. Most families in the districts only had one or two kids due to the poor living conditions and the reaping, but Ron's parents had apparently always wanted a big family and had just kept reproducing.

After lunch, they finally moved onto the weapons stations. As expected, Harry was terrible at most close weaponry, such as sword fighting and using maces. He didn't have the size or strength to be able to use them well. This was in contrast to Ron who excelled at both of these, along with hand-to-hand wrestling. His height and reach gave him a big advantage in sword fighting, while his strength made him very difficult to deal with in hand-to-hand combat and when swinging a mace. He also seemed to have an eye for strategy, which allowed him to be almost a step ahead of his opponent in a skirmish. They stayed until Harry at least had some defensive maneuvres down to hold off an attacker for a small period of time.

To end the day, they headed over to the long-range weapons; the knives, spears, and the bow and arrow where Harry fared much better. It was at the knives station that harry finally found a weapon that felt natural. He turned out to have solid aim and could hit the target on most throws, while also being very precise with his slashes in tight. He probably would prefer to avoid using it in close, but he at least felt he would have a shot with one, if he could get an early strike in. He and Ron both struggled with the spear. Ron's aim didn't appear to be great, while Harry just didn't have the strength to effectively use it over an effective distance. Harry was passable with the bow, but took too long to reload it and to aim it, which made him reluctant to use it in the arena.

Sirius was delighted to hear that Harry had shown some ability with a weapon and encouraged him to keep practicing it. He advised Harry to show the judges that he had some skills in both survival and in fighting in the private sessions with the Gamemakers to get the highest score possible.

On the third day of training, Harry and Ron agreed to train separately. Both were aware that the evaluations were in the afternoon and so they wanted to work on what they would show the judges. Harry spent his time practicing rope-tying so he could demonstrate some workable traps and knife throwing and wielding to show some proficiency in fighting. He also worked on the edible plants and his snares at the rope-tying station to show that he could feed himself.

Lunch arrived quickly on the third day and though Ron and Tracey joined him at the table, no attempt at small-talk was made. Both of them were too nervous to speak. Indeed, even the careers seemed nervous as there was an eerie silence to the lunchroom. Soon, the Gamemakers were calling in the tributes. Harry was grateful that he was from district 5 because it meant that he didn't have to wait too long before his name was called.

The Gamemakers looked at Harry hopefully when he entered the room. They'd presumably been treated to some great demonstrations from the careers and were hoping for more of the same. Harry quickly moved to the edible plants section and split the edible and non-edible plants into separate piles before moving to the rope tying section to show the basic snare that he had learned. Looking up at the Gamemakers, Harry could see that he was starting to lose their attention. Harry set a new trap, this time the one for people, before walking over to the knife station. Pocketing three knives, he grabbed the training dummy and led it to his trap. He forced the dummy to 'walk' into the trap, causing it to be propelled into the air, held only by its leg. Harry quickly pulled out one knife and slit the dummies throat in a precise motion, before stabbing the knife into the dummy's heart. He then walked towards the exit before turning at the door and flinging his last two knives at the dummy, hitting it in the arm and the stomach. He then stopped and looked up at the Gamemakers, signalling that he was finished. They were all watching him now, evaluating his worth. The Head Gamemaker, a man in a weird purple turban, cleared his throat.

"Very good, Mr Potter. You are dismissed." The man said.

"Thank you for your time." Harry replied politely.

He then turned and exited the room, heading for the elevator. He gave Ron a quick thumbs up, before heading up towards his floor. Coming through the door, he was immediately bombarded with questions from both Sirius and Tonks about how it had gone. Harry gave them a quick recount of what he had done and they both agreed that he had done well. He was just talking about how the Gamemakers had reacted when the door opened and Susan walked in. She looked miserable and as soon as Tonks asked her about her performance, she broke down in tears.

"It went terribly!" She sobbed. "I missed my bow and arrow shots, and my shelter fell apart and all the Gamemakers were basically laughing at me!"

Tonks tried to calm her down. "I'm sure it wasn't that bad Susan, you'll be ok."

Susan continued to cry at this. "No, I won't. I'll get a low score and no one will sponsor me."

At this, she ran out of the room crying, with Tonks chasing just behind her. Sirius and Harry sat there in an awkward silence briefly before Harry spoke.

"Will she be OK?" He asked.

Sirius looked unsure but responded. "That's not your concern Harry. You need to focus on yourself. Don't waste time worrying about Susan. I know that seems cruel but that's what the games are."

Harry nodded. "OK, when will the scores be announced then?"

"They'll come out after dinner. You have a bit of time to yourself at the moment. Is there anything you want to do?" Sirius replied.

"No, I'll probably just clean myself up." Harry said.

Harry cleaned himself up before settling down to watch some television. Back home, the Dursleys were always giving him chores, and this meant that he had seen very little television that wasn't hunger games related. It turned out to be strangely enjoyable to watch these Capitol programmes about smart Capitol citizens and the foolish people from the districts that they met. The one Harry was watching was about a Capitol adventurer who explored the districts. The adventurer spent the whole time out-smarting the 'savage' district residents who tried to attack her. Harry continued to watch it until he was called to dinner by Aurelia.

Dinner turned out to be an awkward affair, with Susan still sobbing occasionally. The Adults tried to make small-talk, but there was too much tension around the table about the announcement of the scores. Eventually they gave up and just listened to the gossip about high-profile Capitol residents that Aurelia and the stylists were animatedly discussing, apparently oblivious to the nervous tension that surrounded them. They were just hearing about how the district 11 escort had foolishly been caught wearing fur in a vegetarian restaurant when Sirius announced that the scores would be read soon. The show started with the usual amount of banter from the announcers, filling up time before the scores were announced. The scores are announced by first bringing up the photo of the tribute and then flashing their score beside them.

The careers all were awarded scores in the 8-10 range, with the boy from 1 the only one to get the 10, the tributes from 3 look a bit ridiculous with their 4 and 3 in between. Before he realized it, Harry saw his face on screen smiling at him, before a flashing 7 appeared next to it. The room quickly broke out in celebration with Sirius giving him a clap on the back and Tonks pulling him in for a hug. Harry was still celebrating when the room suddenly went silent. He turned back to the screen in time to see Susan's face smiling back at him with a 2 flashing next to her. Susan stood there briefly, just staring at the screen before breaking down in tears and sprinting out of the room.

"I'd better go talk to her." Tonks sighed, before chasing after Susan.

Sirius nodded, looking uncomfortable before giving Harry an encouraging smile.

"That was a good score Harry, well done. We should be able to find you some sponsors with that." He said.

"Thanks, I hope Susan will be OK though." Harry replied.

"Oh, I'm sure she'll be fine, Tonks will talk to her."

Harry nodded and turned towards the screen once again. Harry had completely missed the district 6 tributes and the boy from 7. The girl from 7's face was on screen now and she had a 5 flashing next to her. The tributes from 8 had unimpressive scores and then it was Ron's face on screen with a 9 appearing beside it. Harry smiled, unsurprised by this. Ron must have shown the Gamemakers his skills in the close combat stations.

The rest of the scores were nothing to really worry about. Tracy scored a 6 while the tributes from 11 and 12 all achieved dismally low scores. The commentators made a few comments about the scores and who their favorites were before the Panem emblem appeared on screen signalling the end of the show. Sirius clapped his hands and turned to address Harry.

"Well done Harry, you're doing great. Now, tomorrow will be preparation for the interviews, try to get a good night's sleep." He said.

Harry nodded his head in agreement before getting up and exiting the room. He got changed out of his clothes and got into bed, letting the situation sink in. He grinned into the darkness. ' _Seven!'_ he thought to himself. ' _I can't believe I could score that high.'_ For the first time Harry imagined himself winning the games, free from the Dursleys and with all the wealth he could imagine. It was with this happy thought that he settled down to sleep, a smile plastered to his face.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N Hey guys, sorry this took so long to update, I've been hectic. Hope you enjoy it.**

The next morning, Harry found himself sitting in his chair as Aurelia circled him like a hawk. "Sit up straight. Put your fists on your knees. Smile more." She admonished him sharply.

Harry tried to make these adjustments and was rewarded with a sharp shake of the head by Aurelia. They had been going at this for an hour now and Harry felt as though he had made no progress whatsoever. He was expected to smile in the right way, make eye contact- but not too much-, keep his back straight; while still seeming relaxed. It seemed impossible to Harry, and Aurelia quickly got frustrated with him.

"You want people to like you don't you?" She sniped.

"Yes, but this is all too much. Can't I just sit still on the stage?" Harry asked.

"No! That doesn't engage the audience. You have to look like you're listening intently to your competitors and always smile at the audience."

"Why though? No one will be watching me. They'll all be watching the careers." Harry questioned.

"Maybe. Some will surely be watching the others though and so you still need to look good. Even if just for the pride of your district. Ok?"

"I suppose so." Harry grumbled.

"Good." Aurelia smiled. "Now, you need to make sure that you make eye contact with the audience and smile…."

It was a few hours later that Harry finally got to lunch. The rest of the session hadn't gone well and Aurelia hadn't bothered to hide her contempt for his performance. She had finally said that 'that'll have to do' before dismissing him to go eat. It seemed that it wasn't only Harry that was in a mood, as lunch turned out to be a quiet affair. Tonks and Susan's session seemed to have gone badly because neither seemed particularly happy. Tonks seemed annoyed and she kept shooting irritated glances at Susan, which Susan didn't seem to notice because she was staring at her lunch in misery. Aurelia, who seemed oblivious to the mood of the party, tried to make conversation but only Sirius responded, and he seemed to be trying to be polite more than anything.

Eventually lunch ended and Harry and Sirius went off to a separate compartment to discuss how they were going to play the interview. Harry sat down opposite Sirius, who fixed Harry with an assessing gaze before speaking.

"So, did you have any plans on how you want to play the interview, Harry?" Sirius asked

"Not really. I haven't really thought about it." Harry replied.

"Well, you don't have the size to effectively come across as a lethal killing machine. No offense."

"None taken."

"I think you can be funny in your own way, but I don't want you telling jokes the whole time."

"I don't think that would work anyway. I'm not that funny."

"You got a higher score than expected, so you'll probably be asked about that. How about we start with you trying to answer questions mysteriously?" Sirius asked.

Harry tried it out, responding slyly to questions that Sirius asked him but it just didn't come naturally to him. Instead it sounded like he just didn't understand the question rather than as a tribute who was hiding something.

"Ok, that didn't work. Maybe try being unassuming but confident."

This didn't work for Harry either. Nor did acting flirty or being strong and silent.

"Ok, that's not working either. Let's try another approach. Why don't you act really earnest and humble? Like you can't believe you got such a high score or that you're here at all."

While still not completely authentic, this approach seemed to work better for Harry. It wasn't that much of a stretch seeing how he was actually legitimately surprised at how well he had done so far and he definitely already preferred the Capitol to district 5. He still wasn't an authentic actor however, and so sometimes his answers came across as scripted rather than natural.

"Ok, that seems like it could work, we'll keep going though and see if you can pull off another approach." Sirius exclaimed.

They continued to rifle through the different approaches, even trying the 'career killing machine' approach as a last resort. None of these worked however and in the end, both Harry and Sirius agreed that the humble, earnest approach was the best way to go. They continued to work on the approach through the afternoon and by the end of the session Harry actually felt pretty confident that he could at least do a passable job for his interview.

Sirius sat back in his chair looking quite satisfied. "Well Harry, I think you'll do quite well tomorrow. Just be humble and add some sarcasm and I think you'll be fine. Pretty much, just be yourself. But try to at least be a little mysterious about your score. We don't want the opposition knowing what you can do."

"Yea. I think it should be ok. Thanks Sirius, by the way, for all the help. I can't imagine how badly I would have fallen apart without you to help." Harry replied

Sirius got a faraway look on his face. "You don't have to thank me Harry, it's the least I could do." He said with a tinge of sadness

"Still, you've really been helpful to me, so thank you." Harry replied.

A wry smile appeared on Sirius's face. "Honestly Harry it's no problem. James would probably come back from the dead just to strangle me if I didn't do everything I could to help out his son."

Harry stared blankly at Sirius. "You knew my Father?" He asked in shock.

"I sure did, you're Mother, Lily, also. But I knew your Dad better. He was my best friend in the entire world."

"Really? What was he like? How come I didn't know this?" Harry asked eagerly

"Your Dad was the best friend I ever had. He was a good person who liked to enjoy life. Me and him had some great times growing up."

"Really? What about my Mother?" Harry inquired.

"I didn't know her quite as well as James. Except for how James would talk about her constantly. But she was a good woman and a good friend. They married just before our last ever reaping. Before my games." Sirius said, a hint of pain on his face.

"Really? Don't people in district 5 usually wait until after their final reaping?" Harry asked.

"They do…" Sirius conceded. "But your parents were in love and didn't want to wait."

"I'm sure many couples want to get married before their last reaping. Why didn't they want to wait?" Harry asked.

"Lily was nervous that one of them was going to be reaped and she wanted to be married before it happened."

"Well, that never happened. So I guess it doesn't matter."

"Actually, it did. James was reaped a month after he and Lily were married." Sirius stated.

Harry looked at Sirius without understanding. "I thought you said it was just before your games?" He said slowly.

A humourless smile grew on Sirius's face. "It was, I volunteered for him immediately."

Harry stared at him in awe. "You volunteered? Why would you volunteer?"

"Listen Harry, your Dad was basically family to me. My own family hated me and so your Dad and his family helped me out where possible. He and your Mom were in love and had a future together. So, when your Dad's name was read out I didn't even think about it. I just stepped forward and volunteered."

Harry was speechless. He just stared at Sirius in respect. After a minute or so, Sirius cleared his throat and looked at his watch.

"Well, it must be almost time for dinner Harry. We'd better go, or we'll have Aurelia breathing down our necks."

"Yeah… Sure, lets go." Harry mumbled out. Still in shock from Sirius's bombshell.

Dinner was another quiet affair. Harry was still digesting all the information he had just learnt, while Sirius looked to be in a world of his own. Harry wasn't sure what was up with Tonks and Susan, but both of them seemed unhappy and neither seemed to be inclined to speak. Even Aurelia seemed quiet as she barely made any attempt at conversation.

After dinner everyone went their separate ways and Harry left to his bedroom to clean up and go over the days events. He felt more confident about his prospects for the next day, but still had to wonder what would happen when he went into the arena. In the end, he went to bed early as the day had been a tiring one. Indeed, he dropped off to sleep almost as soon as he put his head down on the pillow.

The majority of the next day was spent in the remake centre, being worked on once again. Harry was surprised at how much time it took, considering he had just been there a few days ago His prep team insisted on repeating the whole process to make sure he looked his best and so Harry was resigned to a day of beauty therapy.

When he finally was released, he was sent to Macerius, who would dress him in his outfit for the interview. As it turned out, Macerius had gone for the sleek but simple look for Harry. It was a common black suit which fitted Harry perfectly and a green tie to match the colour of his eyes. The one distinguishing feature of the outfit was the belt, which had a lightning bolt in the middle. The bolt seemed to be designed in a way that provided the same effect as the parade, with the lights flashing in a downwards motion from the top to the bottom, once again giving the impression of a lightning bolt crashing into the ground.

Harry looked into the mirror to assess himself. His hair had actually managed to be gelled back for the night and the total image made Harry look far older than he ever had before. He turned towards Macerius, who looked very satisfied with himself.

"I look amazing. Thank you Macerius…. For everything." Harry said sincerely.

Macerius smiled. "It has been my pleasure Mr Potter. I must say that you have been far easier to work with than those inner-district kids. I hope you can beat them at their own game."

"Well, I'll try to at least."

Macerius went over a few finishing details before the ceremony. Soon, however, it was time for the interviews. The tributes were all lined up in order. Harry was in-between the girl from district 6 and Susan, who was in a nice, simple, blue dress and a necklace that had the same thunderbolt that Harry's belt contained. It seemed that the district 5 stylists had decided on a simple, combined approach in dressing their charges.

After being lined up behind the stage, they were welcomed onto the stage by Gilderoy Lockhart, the legendary Capitol host of the Hunger Games. A handsome man, who was considered to be a sex symbol in the Capitol, he looked the same as every other year that Harry had seen him. He had the same charming smile that he always had, along with the same messy, but controlled hair style that he had had since Harry could remember. This year he had decided to go with a Purple suit, which really didn't seem to be a good fit on him, not that you could tell by the applause the audience were giving him. It was still better though than the hideous lime green suit that he had worn the year before in Harry's opinion.

Lockhart welcomed them all to the 70th hunger games and warmed the audience up with a few jokes to get the show rolling. He also gave a quick, mandatory, explanation as to why the games existed. However, it was not too long before he turned to the tributes behind him to introduce them.

"And now, it's time to meet our tributes. First, from district 1, would you please all give it up for Pansy!" He announced.

Pansy strutted up to the stage in an exceptionally revealing outfit to greet Lockhart, making sure to give the audience all the best angles of her body. She daintily shook Lockhart's hand before sitting down and smiling widely at the audience.

Harry found out quickly that the career interviews were a lot more intimidating up close than they were on a television screen. Harry had always scoffed at the career boys flexing their muscles and the girls discussing their killing talent but now, faced with the prospect of being thrown into an arena with them, it didn't seem so foolish. The tributes from one tried to be cunning and show intelligence along with the usual showboating, but the tributes from 2 and the boy from 4 stuck to the script of just bragging about how they would kill everyone and flexing their muscles. The two tributes from 3 weren't memorable at all, while the girl from 4 at least tried to talk herself up, though it wasn't very convincing when seated next to her hulking district partner. Then it was Susan's turn and Harry realized that he was next.

Susan's interview turned out to be one of the more awkward interviews that Harry had ever seen. Lockhart tried to get her to open up, asking her about her life at home and her experience in the Capitol but it seemed that she just couldn't seem to create any answers for the audience. Instead, she buried her head in her dress and gave intelligible answers that gave Lockhart nothing to work with. After a few attempts at helping her out, Lockhart decided to quickly wrap up her interview in what seemed suspiciously less than 3 minutes. Harry watched Susan walk back to her seats, with eyes stained red and a miserable expression on her face. Harry continued to watch her as she took her seat and so it took him a few seconds to realise that his name was being called. With a sudden jolt of fear, Harry stood up and made his way towards the centre of the stage, where Lockhart was waiting, already having moved on to the next tribute with an encouraging smile on his face.

"Next on the stage is Harry Potter! Our district 5 male tribute" Announced Lockhart.

The crowd clapped Harry politely o to the stage, as he took a seat next to the perpetually smiling man. Lockhart gave him what he probably thought was a reassuring smile before beginning the interview.

"So harry, you've been one of the Capitols favourites since the opening ceremonies. How did you find the whole experience, were you surprised at all the attention?" He asks.

Harry thought about the question for the moment, remembering Sirius's advice to be humble and earnest in the interview. 'Honestly, Gilderoy, it took me completely by surprise. The support I've received from the people here in the Capitol has been amazing and I'm very grateful to them for it.' Harry earnestly answered.

"Isn't that fantastic folks?" Lockhart asked the audience. "It's always nice to meet a tribute who appreciates the support he gets."

The crowd seemed to agree with this sentiment, if their applause was anything to judge by. Lockhart waited a few moments for the applause to die down before continuing on with the next question.

"So, Harry. You also managed to score a 7 in your training score, a great score for someone from your district. Care to tell us what you showed the Gamemakers?" Lockhart asked, adding a hush to his voice for dramatic effect.

Harry put on a face resembling that of someone who seemed uncertain. "I don't know Gilderoy, isn't that supposed to stay between me and the Gamemakers?" He asked.

Lockhart put on a mischievous smile. "Come now Harry, we're all friends here. Aren't we folks?" He asked.

The crowd responded by voicing their agreement. Harry pretended to be unsure for a moment before smiling indulgently. "Well, Gilderoy. I just showed them that I had all-around skills which will allow me to succeed no matter what the arena presents."

Lockhart slapped his knee theatrically. "Ah, so you're already thinking about the arena are you? Can you provide us with a hint of what you're looking to do in there?"

"Ah, Gilderoy I don't want to give away anything to my competitors. I'll just say that you'll all see why I got a 7 in my score." Harry replied playfully.

Lockhart put on a face of disappointment before carrying on. "Very well Harry, I guess we'll just have to wait. Now, why don't you tell us a bit about your home life in district 5?"

Harry put on a strained smile. "Well, I live with my Aunt and Uncle, and my cousin. I have ever since I was 1."

Lockhart put a hand over his heart and leaned in closer. "Why do you live with them Harry?"

"Well, my parents died in an industrial accident at work. My father died trying to save my Mother from the fumes."

Lockhart looked grave at this and the crowd has had gone completely silent, gripped by Harry's tale.

"Well Harry. I think I can comfortably say that our hearts go out to you. Your Father though, I have heard, had some connection to our popular victor, Sirius Black. Is that correct?"

Harry smiled. "Yes, that's true. My Father was actually Sirius's best friend. Do you remember much about Sirius's reaping Gilderoy?"

Lockhart grew a look of genuine bafflement, he clearly didn't remember it at all. "No, I can't say I do Harry. Should I?"

Harry focused hard, making sure that his face had an almost sorrowful look. "I think so. You may remember that Sirius actually volunteered for his games?"

A small look of recognition appeared on Lockhart's face. "That's right, I remember that now. But how is that relevant to today?"

Harry smiled. "Because, it was my Dad that Sirius volunteered for."

Lockhart seemed to be ready to fire out another question when the buzzer went off, signalling the end of the interview. There was a groan of disappointment from the audience before they politely clapped Harry off the stage.

The rest of the interviews passed by with few standing out in Harry's mind. Ron's interview turned out to be quite good, where he talked to the crowd about his family back home and how he was looking to follow in his brother's footsteps and become a victor. Tracey from 10's interview was also quite decent, as she successfully played up a mysterious tribute who was really hiding her skills until they got into the arena, where she would kill everyone.

The show finished with the boy tribute from 12 awkwardly attempting to be intimidating, and failing. Lockhart then fed the crowd a few witty one-liners before thanking everyone for watching and reminding them to watch the start of the games tomorrow at 10 A.M, Capitol Time.

Once the show had finished, they were quickly led to the elevators where Harry and Susan managed to score one that contained only the kids from 12. The trip was very awkward as Harry at least, was contemplating the reality that his fellow occupants in this elevator would be his opponents tomorrow.

The elevator stopped on the 5th floor and Harry and Susan quietly made their way into the lounge area. Already, the adults were grouped there waiting for them. They were given assurances that the night had gone well and were sent off to clean up. After freshening up and having a quiet dinner, Harry and the others all sat down in the viewing room to watch the recaps. Harry watched the interviews and got the same impression that he had live. The career interviews were intimidating, though boring again now that they were seen on a television screen while most of the other tributes interviews sort of blended together. If Harry had to say, he would say that He and Ron had the most interesting and well received interviews of the out-district tributes, while Susan's was memorable for simply being incredibly awful.

At the end of the recaps, a silence descended on the room. Sirius and Tonks stood up to address Susan and Harry.

"Good luck tomorrow guys. Remember to avoid the fighting at the cornucopia if possible and we'll be in the mentor's lounge trying to help you wherever we can." Tonks said trying to seem chirpy.

"That's right. Neither of you can match the careers at the cornucopia so avoid it if possible. Trust your instincts and avoid the careers as long as possible. Anything can happen in the games so never lose hope. I hope to see one of you at the end." Sirius added with a sad smile.

With that, Harry and Susan were sent off to their rooms for the night. For Harry the night was a long and torturous one. Understandably, Harry found it almost impossible to sleep and so all he could think about were the different ways that he could be killed the next day. Throughout the night, he saw the different ways he could be killed. The boy from 1 decapitated him, the boy from 2 strangled him, and the girl from 2 wailed into him with a mace. Harry couldn't help but imagine these scenarios again and again throughout the night as sleep would evade him.

Eventually, he must have slipped into unconsciousness though his dreams gave him no respite. Harry again saw himself murdered in different ways by all of his fellow tributes. The small girl from 12 chopped off his legs, the girl from three caught him in a trap, and the boy from 4 just flat out dismembered him. In one ridiculous dream, Susan stabbed him in the back while laughing about something that Harry couldn't pick up on.

Eventually, he slipped off into unconsciousness, where he could peacefully sleep, in preparation for the next day.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N** Hey guys, thank you for the reviews, they're always nice to read. Sorry that this chapter has taken so long, but I just always seem to be busy these days. I will continue to work on this story, but the updates may stay around this slow for awhile. I'm not very familiar with the rating system on here so I would appreciate it if you could give me some idea as to whether T is the correct rating (The Hunger Games is always going to be violent. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy the chapter!

It seemed like no time had passed at all when Harry felt himself being roughly awoken from his slumber. He peered up with one eye to see Macerius's impatient face glaring down at him.

'"Hurry up Mr Potter." Macerius exclaimed. "It's a big day and we need to get going."

Harry groggily sat up. "How much time do I have?" He asked.

"We have 25 minutes until we get picked up by the hovercraft. Go take a shower and get ready." Macerius demanded.

Harry dragged himself to the shower and drowsily stood underneath the water blast, trying to wake himself up. After this he just managed to get changed before getting whisked away to the roof to wait for the hovercraft. As Harry looked out at the view, he was struck by just how beautiful the Capitol really was. It was still early in the morning and the sun was in the process of rising, so the people were mostly asleep. This meant that the city was dead and the way that the sun reflected off the buildings and illuminated the empty streets was stunning to Harry. The whole picture reminded Harry that there were good parts of the Capitol, even when there were evils like the hunger games enforced. This could be one of the last things that Harry would ever see, and Harry was grateful that it was something as amazing as this.

Soon, the hovercraft arrived to pick up Harry and Macerius. A ladder descending from the hovercraft, and stopping just in front of the two of them. As soon as Harry touched the ladder he felt an electric jolt, which held his hands to the ladder- he couldn't move them at all. Macerius grabbed onto the ladder and then both of them were lifted onto the hovercraft. Inside, they found a spacious room with seats available and some food prepared.

The trip turned out to be quite a long one, at least for Harry and at one point Macerius observed that the arena must be quite far out from the Capitol, but couldn't say what that meant for the tributes. Despite, this longevity, Harry had still only managed to eat one sandwich by the time they actually landed. Butterflies had been circling in his stomach and now that they were on the ground his nerves were threatening to overwhelm him. Some escorts in white tunics entered the hovercraft escorted out of the hovercraft and down a tunnel. This tunnel led to a small room with no windows and a single couch. Just to the side, there was a changing room for Harry.

Macerius handed Harry the outfit that has been given to the tributes this year. On first inspection it looked to harry like a warm outfit. The shirt was thick and seemed to keep his body heat in while the trousers were warm and comfortable. However, when he looked closer, Harry could see that he'd been given an undershirt that was exceptionally light and that his pants could be unzipped to become shorts. Harry couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at this and look at Macerius questioningly.

Macerius appeared to be contemplating this with a frown on his face as he ran the clothing through his hands. Finally he said "I would say that based on the outfit that this year the conditions will be volatile. I think it will be hot and cold at different times so you'll want to prepare for that."

Harry swallowed nervously. "Is that a common practice?"

Macerius shrugged. "Sometimes they like to change it up. This must just be one of those years. You should get changed now Mr Potter."

Harry nodded and dragged himself to the changing room. He got changed into the provided clothes, finding them to be well-fitted and comfortable. He then dragged himself back into the lounge area where Macerius was waiting. Harry eyed up the tube in the corner of the room nervously, expecting to be told to go up to the arena at any second.

In the end though, there turned out to be another long wait of at least half an hour. Harry and Macerius sat there in silence, Harry making sure to have some water and food even though it felt like he was going to be sick. The wait seemed to stretch forever and it unfortunately allowed Harry to consider that he may be dead within the next hour. There were endless possibilities of how he could die and who might do it. A roll of film seemed to play in his head, re-imagining the numerous ways that he could die.

Finally, though still too soon for Harry, a voice announced that the tubes were going up in 30 seconds and that the contestants needed to enter them. Harry walked over and stood in the tube, briefly looking up into what turned out to be a blinding light. He looked back at Macerius who had a slightly regretful look on his face.

However, all that he said was "Good luck Mr Potter, I believe you will do very well."

Harry just stared at the man, giving him a slight nod. The nerves had taken over and he didn't think he could even speak. The tube shut and Harry got one last look at his stylist before he began to move.

The tube rose and Harry's world went dark. He could see light above slowly coming closer, but it was still too far up to provide him with any real illumination. Soon though, Harry was lifted into the light which was such a contrast to the dark tube that Harry had to close his eyes for a second. When he opened his eyes, he saw the arena for the first time.

The arena this year was basically a desert. The heat is the first thing that Harry noticed, as it seemed to be stifling and it seemed to surround them. Because of this, the orange dirt had been baked into the ground and, aside from a healthy covering of palm trees, this was basically all he could see. In the distance Harry could see what appeared to be a river that seemed to cut through the arena and go on indefinitely.

The voice of the legendary hunger games announcer, Ludo Bagman, rang out across the arena.

"Hello everyone and welcome to the 70th Annual Hunger Games, may the odds be ever in your favour!"

With that a bong rang out across the arena signalling the beginning of the 60 second waiting period. Harry looked around to get a better look around. As far as he could see, the only water source seemed to be the river and Harry was betting that that was the Gamemakers way of ensuring regular action.

Looking around he can't see Ron but he can see Susan about 5 spots to the right of himself. She seems to be shaking with fear. The boy from 1 and the girl from 2 are the only careers that he can see and they both look ready to go. Harry decided to take this as an indicator that all of the careers would be good to go when the buzzer sounded.

Harry estimated that there must be about 30 seconds remaining and he still hadn't really decided on how he was going to approach this. The trees in the distance looked tempting and he had already figured that he would have to stay at least a bit close to the river, especially in the heat of the desert.

Sirius and Tonks had both advised him to avoid the cornucopia and truthfully, that had been his original plan. However, something about the arena and the clothing was bugging him. It was clear that a water bottle would be an advantage in this environment and the easiest way to obtain one would be by grabbing a backpack. Also, the current climate was stifling hot to Harry and he felt completely overdressed. Logically, this meant that it would be getting cold at some point if he had been provided with such warm clothing. A blanket or sleeping bag would be handy for those moments.

Mostly though, Harry's instinct was screaming for him to try the cornucopia. He had always been a fast runner at school- getting away from Dudley and his friends had provided him with plenty of practice- and he felt that he could get his stuff and get out before the careers could really organise a plan of attack. In the end Harry felt that the only way he could win the games was by trusting his instincts. His gut was saying that he needed some help from the cornucopia and so he decided he was going to go for it. He adjusted his balance and leant forward focused on the items he wanted. There was a backpack almost in a straight line in front of him and Harry thought he could see some knives just in the entrance of the actual structure. He lined them up and his exit path, diagonally right from where he would be grabbing the weapons.

Suddenly, the timer rand out and the buzzer sounded, and Harry didn't hesitate. He was immediately off, sprinting across the hot dirt as quickly as possible. Around him he could see a handful of others running towards the cornucopia with him while others abandoned the area as quick as possible. Harry grabbed the backpack that's not too far away from him before carrying onto the middle. He made it before anyone else and decided not to hang around. He grabbed the first weapon that he could see - an axe- before finding the sheath of knives sitting at the entrance of the cornucopia. He quickly picked them up also before turning around to quickly assess the situation. Many of the other tributes appeared to just be arriving, though many were giving Harry and his axe a wide berth. Luckily for Harry, the Careers were still organizing themselves on his left and so his planned exit path was still available off to the right. He quickly set off, sprinting past two tributes he didn't recognize who were fighting over a backpack. He quickly found himself clear of the mines and heading off into the desert wasteland, with only the trees in the distance providing something to aim for.

Harry had been running for about five minutes before he became aware of a noise behind him. He turned his head around to see a girl, maybe from seven, following him with a sword in her hands. Harry quickened his pace and changed direction slightly, trying to shake the girl. The girl kept up with him however and after thirty minutes of running, with no trees or bush to lose the girl in it became clear to Harry that there was no way to get away from her on this barren landscape. The temperature was unbearably hot as well and Harry knew he would not be able to go for much longer at such a pace. Instead he slowed down and turned to face the girl, who slowed down as well. They stopped in the middle of the desert, facing each other with nothing but the orange dirt surrounding them.

"What do you want?" Harry managed to pant out. The girl looked quite ragged herself and her answer came in-between breaths.

"The axe. I want the axe." She replied.

"Then why didn't you grab one from the cornucopia?" Harry asked, bewildered.

"Because you took the only one that wasn't deep in the middle of it. I wasn't going to hang around and try find another one." The girl replied.

"Well, you have a sword. That should be enough." Harry tried to reason.

"I don't want the sword though. That was my axe and I want it!" The girl exclaimed.

Harry gave it a quick thought and came up with a solution that may work. "Ok, ok. I can't just leave myself defenceless. What if we swapped?" Harry asked.

The girl seemed to think about it and then replied. "Yea, sure 5. We pass them to each other at the same time then." She replied.

Harry had some misgivings over this plan, but couldn't see another way out of this situation. He slowly crept forward, the axe still in his hand. The girl mirrored his actions and slowly they got closer to each other. Harry was just relaxing and thinking that he could get out of this when the girl swung her sword at him, aiming for his neck.

Harry saw the movement early and his instincts caused him to duck and quickly stumble backwards out of the girls range.

"What the…? Why did you do that?" Harry exclaimed

The girl looked a little ashamed but didn't bother to defend her actions. "Sorry 5. That's the game though, it's kill or be killed." She replied

"Well, I'm not giving you the axe now. I will give you this chance to leave though." Harry replied. Hopeful that he could avoid this situation which was rapidly escalating.

The girl seemed to consider it but still replied, "Sorry 5, but I still need that axe."

Harry realized that there would be no peaceful way out of the situation and shrugged off the backpack that he had taken. He gripped his axe tighter in anticipation. He and the girl began to circle each other, evaluating each other. Harry faked a few swings to see how the girl would react and each time the girl seemed to step back quickly. They continued to circle each other until, finally, the girl lost patience and swung, again aiming for the neck. Harry ducked and kicked out at the girls' leg, connecting with her shin. She stumbled back briefly before charging at Harry, lashing out at his stomach. Harry quickly dodged out of the way and turned to face the girl whose momentum had taken her well past him. She walked back close to Harry and this time the girl changed attack and lunged at him, looking to stab him through the stomach. Harry easily sidestepped the attack and then reacted on instinct.

He didn't realize what he had done until he heard the large squelching sound emanating from the girls stomach. Harry looked into the girls shocked eyes before they both simultaneously cast their eyes downwards to where Harry's axe was now buried into the girls' stomach.

In horror, Harry pulled back, taking the axe and some of the girls' insides with him. The girl stumbled forward before falling to her knees, blood quickly seeping out of the wound and surrounding her. She managed to mumble something that sounded to Harry like 'no' before she lay down on the ground, unmoving.

Harry stared down at the lifeless body in shock. A girl who had just been alive was now lying at his feet, lifeless. Her blood only covered his arms but it felt like it was all over him, he couldn't get away from it. In his mind all he could see were her eyes, shocked as she realised what had happened. He stood there unmoving for some time just staring down at the girl until the cannon boomed. Once, twice, three times. All the way up to 10 times by Harry's count. The sound seemed to mock him, never-ending in its message. Intellectually, he knew that the fighting at the cornucopia must have finished but it felt like the cannons were constantly reminding him that he had ended someone's life.

Finally, the cannons stopped and Harry was able to think. He realized that he needed to move so that they could pick up the girl's body. He grabbed her sword, which had fallen from her grasp, and left it on her body so that it would be taken out of the arena, he had no need for it. The girl had no other items, as for some reason she had not tried to pick a backpack and so he turned his back on the body and continued moving towards his original destination, the cluster of trees that he could see in the distance, which looked close to where the river that intersected the arena would be. He knew that his opponents would see the body being taken out of the arena and he needed to get far away from the spot.

His hike lasted most of the afternoon, half jogged and half walked. During the hike one more cannon fired, raising the death toll to 11 by Harry's count. The sun was now exceptionally hot and Harry now understood why they had given him the option to rip off the bottom of his trousers and he was very thankful. By the time he reached some cover under the enclosure of palm trees, he was thoroughly exhausted and thirsty. The sun was still up, which meant that Harry felt that he could take some time to decide what to do. He decided to search through the contents of his backpack.

Inside, there was thankfully a water bottle and some purifying pills. Along with this, the bag contained some rope, a sleeping bag, some basic medical supplies, and some dried fruit and crackers. In fact, Harry felt foolish for not checking his backpack earlier because the bottle inside contained water in it, allowing Harry to have a much-needed drink. The water was warm after his hike in the sun, but it was still drinkable. He gulped down the bottle and was quickly out of water once more. He could already see that water would be exceptionally valuable in the games this year and that he would need to ensure that he didn't run out. This was bound to be a problem as. The careers were likely to be patrolling the river this year meaning that Harry would need to be careful about when he went to refill.

For now, Harry decided to set a couple of the basic snares that he had learnt in training around the area in the hope that he may catch some wildlife. On his hike, he had encountered some animals, with some rabbits and squirrels scampering around the place. Harry still remembered the basics from his pre-games training, but the snares that he managed to erect still seemed inadequate and so he decided to ration out the food that he already had for now until he knew had a guaranteed food source.

By the time Harry had finished with his snares, the sun had started to go down and now the light was dimming. Harry decided that this would be a good time to go down to the river to fill his water. He made his way to the edge of the trees to give a lookout at the river. As far as he could see, the river was unoccupied and so he cautiously decided to approach it.

Luckily, no one else had followed him and so his part of the river was unoccupied allowing him to easily be able to get some water from the river. He filled his bottle and added some purifying tablets. The 30 minute wait that he had learnt to wait was boring but then he was able to take long drinks until the bottle was empty. He repeated the process of filling the water bottle and purifying it before pocketing it back into his backpack.

By the time he returned to his spot under the palm trees, the sun had gone down and it had become obvious why the clothing provided had a warm option. It was now bitingly cold even when fully layered and Harry couldn't help but wonder how many tributes would be caught out in the cold for the night. His decision to get the backpack from the cornucopia was looking better and better by the minute and he couldn't help thanking his instincts as he laid out his sleeping bag for the night.

Before entering the sleeping bag, he set one last trap at the only feasible entrance to his little enclosure. It was the basic human trap, which would hopefully propel someone who walked into it the air and hang them off the tree by the foot. It wasn't too difficult to get out of, but Harry felt it should give him some warning of any intruder.

Finally Harry went back to his sleeping bag and lay down, staring at the sky through a gap in the trees and waiting. The anthem started not too long afterwards as the Panem seal appeared on the screen before the face of the fallen tributes appeared in the sky.

The first face to appear in the sky was the male from district 3, quickly followed by the district 6 male which meant that all of the careers had made it through the night, as had Susan against all odds. Harry briefly wondered where Susan was and how she had avoided the careers, she had looked petrified the last time he had seen her, on her pedestal. Then Harry was staring into the face that he was sure would haunt his dreams for a long time. The girl from 7 looked somewhat happy and very much alive as she smiled down at him and it was tough for Harry to associate that face with the girl who had tried to kill him. Harry had to look away briefly and by the time he looked back, it was the District 8 males face fading away in the sky. Harry barely had time to hope Ron made it before it was Ron's district partner's face that came up. Harry breathed out a sigh of relief even as the male from 10 showed up. The girl who had sat with him at lunch once or twice, Tracey Davis, was the next to appear in the sky and gave Harry the first death that he had interacted with. He felt a pang in his stomach before pushing it away, he didn't make the rules and if Harry was to win, Tracey was always going to die. Both tributes from 11 and 12 appeared above before the anthem ended and the sky went dark.

Harry reflected on what he had seen, there were few surprises really. The careers had made it as they usually do and Harry was happy to know that Ron was still out there. There were only two things that Harry couldn't really understand. He had subconsciously already chalked Susan up as a first day death and now he couldn't grasp how she could have survived. The other thing harry hadn't expected was for Tracey to die so early. She had come across as quite a cunning girl to Harry and it seemed like she would have made it at least a little longer.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: Hey guys, sorry about the long wait, I kinda got sidetracked from this for a while, life's been pretty hectic. I'm not sure about this chapter and so I would love to hear any feedback on it. Anyway, hope you all enjoy it.**

Sleep didn't come easily to Harry that night, as every time he closed his eyes, all he could see were the eyes of the girl from 7. He didn't even know her name and yet he had ended her life. All he could see was the girls uncomprehending eyes as she realised that she had been stabbed. It was probably because of this that Harry took a moment to realise that he was actually awake again, within what felt like a minute.

Briefly, Harry wondered what had awoken him. Then he heard it. At the entrance of the enclosure Harry had settled in there was a seemingly unending stream of violent swear words that would be enough to make even Dudley blush.

Harry arose and silently followed the source of the voice, being careful not to trip over any stray roots or rocks on the ground below him. As he approached, he raised his knife, his hand trembling only slightly. He was almost to the source of the noise when he realized that he recognized that voice.

Peering out into the darkness he could see the silhouette of the body, struggling in Harry's poorly constructed trap with one foot dangling in mid-air trying to get themselves free while still swearing profusely, apparently not concerned by the noise they were making.

Swallowing hard, Harry called out softly into the darkness "Ron?" He asked.

The figure stopped struggling immediately and turned to face Harry.

"Harry? Is that you?" Ron's voice answered back, a definite tone of relief present in the voice.

"Yea, what happened to you?" Harry asked.

"I got myself caught up in this bloody trap didn't I? I was just trying to figure out how to get myself down without falling on my face." Ron replied.

Harry gave it a quick thought before stepping forward. "Ok, what if I cut you down so you can brace yourself for the fall?" He asked.

Ron seemed to think about it before agreeing. He stretched his arms out towards the ground to catch his fall before nodding at Harry.

"Ok, cut me down." Ron said, an edge of nervousness in his voice.

Harry stepped swiftly forward before slicing through the rope above Ron. Ron immediately came crashing down to the ground, his arms just breaking the 2 metre fall. He lay on the ground briefly before gingerly getting to his feet. He seemed to brush himself off before looking around at his surroundings.

"So, nice little spot you've got here by the look of it." Ron remarked.

Harry nodded, a little bemused. "Thanks, I thought it gave me a bit of protection anyway."

Harry could see Ron's silhouette nodding awkwardly in the dark before looking away. An awkward silence descended on the two as they considered their new situation.

"Ron, how did you find me?" Harry asked.

"Well, to be honest I was at the cornucopia grabbing a few supplies as quickly as I could and I saw you run off in this direction. Then Malfoy and the Careers came my way and I had to run the other way. I waited a few hours hidden by some rocks before doubling back and looking for you."

"Malfoy? Which one is Malfoy?" Harry asked, not really knowing any of the other tributes names.

"He's the boy from district 1. Bill was telling me about him last night, his name is Draco Malfoy. Apparently, his Father is a victor from the 45th hunger games and so baby Draco wants to follow in his father's footsteps."

"Seriously? He doesn't need any of the glory or money? He only volunteered to be like his father?" Harry asked disbelievingly.

Ron gave a harsh bark of laughter. "Yea, amazing isn't it? It's not surprising though, the career districts can get crazy like that. And apparently the Malfoys are one of the worst. Bill hates Draco's old man, you should hear him whining about the man."

Harry laughed briefly, still aware of the need to keep noise low. He looked around briefly, examining his options before turning to Ron.

"So, do you want to team up, at least until late in the games?" He asked.

"Well mate…." Ron began slowly, as though talking to a toddler. "That would be why I followed you through this godforsaken arena now wouldn't it?"

Harry laughed quietly. "I suppose that would make sense. Allies then?" He asked as he held his hand towards Ron.

"Allies" Ron confirmed as they shook hands.

After that, they had a quick discussion about the gear they had acquired. Ron hadn't been as quick as Harry in getting to the supplies and as such had come away with far less than harry. All he had managed to grab was a cleaver and a thin blanket that felt like it would barely provide any warmth whatsoever. Harry looked doubtfully down at the silhouette of the blanket as he ran it between his fingers.

"This is all you have? It's freezing out here!" Harry exclaimed.

"Well… Yea. It's better than nothing I suppose." Ron replied, sounding somewhat abashed.

Harry shook his head. "Come on, I'll let you use my sleeping bag. One person can sleep and one person can keep watch. Then we'll swap." Harry said.

"Sounds good, do you want to be on guard first or should I?"

Harry thought about it briefly. "I'll do it, you go to sleep. I'll wake you up in a few hours."

After that, the night stretched on as the temperature continued to drop. Harry was left to shiver in the dark, with only Ron's thin blanket available to provide any warmth to him. Again, Harry found himself wondering how some of the other tributes were doing in this weather. He was personally struggling in this blanket, but for those that had nothing it would surely be a horrific night.

He got an answer about an hour later as he sat at the entrance to the enclosure, when he saw signs of smoke far away across the arena, the general lack of trees providing little to no smoke cover. Harry assumed that this gave away the position of the careers as no other tributes would be brave, or stupid, enough to light a fire in the middle of the night.

Unfortunately, while the first part of his assumption may have been true, the second part proved to be false. About half an hour later, Harry saw a second cloud of smoke grace the arena, incredibly maybe only an hour's hike away from the first. Harry shook his head in disgust, wondering what tribute could possibly have been that stupid.

From there, the following events were predictable. An hour and a half later Harry heard a shout, followed by several screams of pain. Then maybe a 10 minute waiting period before the now familiar sound of a cannon rang out across the arena, cutting the number of contestants down to twelve.

"Bloody Hell, is that another one down?" Came a sleepy voice from behind Harry.

Harry turned around to face Ron. "Yea, someone was stupid enough to light a fire apparently."

Ron shook his head. "Idiots."

They sat there for some time, silently staring out across the vast arena before Ron again broke the silence.

"Go on mate. Go take a sleep, I'll take watch for the rest of the night."

"Are you sure? I don't mind." Harry replied.

"No, honestly. You need some sleep as well."

"Fair enough, wake me when it gets light again will you?"

"Will do."

Harry trudged off to where the sleeping bag lay and got in. For security, he pulled a knife from his pocket to keep next to his bed, just in case. He then lay his head down and once again allowed the darkness to consume him.

It seemed only minutes later that someone was shaking him telling him to wake up. Harry sat up sharply, startled and disorientated. Before he could think about it he grabbed his knife and wildly swung it, causing his attacker to quickly step back.

"Bloody hell mate, calm down it's just me." Angry voice stated.

Harry groggily peered up seeing Ron's face glaring down at him. He groggily got to his feet and walked over to his backpack which was sitting behind Ron.

"Sorry mate. You took me by surprise. Maybe don't shake me next time?" Harry said, with his back to Ron.

Harry got out his water bottle and took a drink, not hearing any response from Ron. He turned around to face his ally, with the bottle outstretched in his hand.

"Anyway, do you want a drin- what's wrong?"

Ron still staring at Harry, this time in horror. "Harry…. Why is there blood all down your front?"

Harry looked down and saw that he still had the girl from 7's blood on his stomach. He looked away uneasily from Ron, unable to look him in the eye.

"Oh, that's um nothing. Don't worry about it."

"Harry, you can tell me. Whose blood is it?" Ron asked uneasily.

"I said leave it Ron! Don't worry about it." Harry snapped.

Ron however, stubbornly put his foot to the ground. "No Harry, I need to know whose blood it is. How did it get there?"

"It's nothing. It's the girl from 7. She attacked me and I had to fight back." Harry replied, refusing to look Ron in the eye.

There was a brief silence, while Ron digested this before letting out a low whistle.

"Wow… So the games have already properly started for you. Why did she attack you?"

"She wanted my axe. I offered to swap it for her sword but she wasn't having it. It escalated and we ended up fighting."

"I'm sorry Harry that sucks. Are you ok?" Ron asked, real concern apparent in his voice.

Harry wasn't really ok, the girl seemed to still be haunting him at every moment and his thoughts had rarely strayed from her since the events the previous day. However, he knew it would be suicide to announce that to the nation that was undoubtedly watching this conversation right now.

So instead he shrugged his shoulders and replied in a forced tone of nonchalance, "Of course I'm fine. It's the games isn't it?"

Ron looked unsatisfied with that response but was clever enough to understand what Harry was doing.

He raised his voice in an obvious show of false bravado and replied. "Fair enough mate, at least you're on the board aye? One ahead of me anyway."

Harry smirked back. "And that's the way it's going to stay there mate."

Ron chuckled back. "Keep dreaming, the next one's mine."

Harry shook his head and laughed, feeling a little sick in his stomach. He turned around and walked over to his backpack, feeling like they had adequately put on a show for the Capitol audiences. He proceeded to organise his gear before turning around to face Ron.

"By the way, did you want a drink of water? Have you had any?" Harry asked.

Ron shook his head. "Nah, I had some already. Had to take the risk of drinking directly from the river, but it doesn't seem to be poisoned. I feel fine anyway."

"Really? Why on earth did they give me purifying tablets then?" Harry asked, perplexed.

Ron just shrugged as a response before picking up his own gear, which consisted only of the thin blanket and a cleaver that he had apparently picked up at the cornucopia.

"I have no idea. Do you want to continue moving or did you want to stay here?" He asked.

Harry looked over to where he had heard a scream last night. "Well the careers were definitely over that way last night, but who knows where they're moving to next? What do you think?"

Ron seemed to think for a second. "Well…" He started. "If it were me, I would figure that the other tributes are going to need water and so I would walk along the river side looking for tributes."

"So we should keep moving?"

"Yea, I think that's the best bet. But we need to stay as far away from the river as possible while still being able to see it."

"Fair enough, that was what I had been doing already. Should we head off then?" Harry asked.

Ron agreed and so they headed off. Thankfully the sun had barely risen and so the early part of their trek was not too hot. However, it had only been a few hours when the heat started to take effect. Both Harry and Ron were soon taking regular breaks to ensure that they could continue on. The heat seemed to have worsened since yesterday, and Harry couldn't help but wonder if this was the Gamemakers doing

The day then proceeded to drag on as Harry and Ron made the trek across the arena. By midday, they had both stripped down to just shorts, but this seemed to provide very little relief from the sun. On top of the extreme temperatures, there was not a cloud in the sky to provide cover, nor were there many trees available. On the rare occasions that they found one, they were only permitted maybe 10 minutes of cover before the tree would inexplicably wither and die. Harry supposed that the good people in the Capitol were enjoying watching the contestants struggle in the heat.

Harry hoped that this was the case, because nothing else happened for the day. There were no more cannons throughout the day and Harry doubted that there many entertaining scuffles in this heat.. Harry and Ron had settled in about a mile from the river for safety. Unfortunately, they had not been as lucky today as they had been the night before and as such had found no trees to shelter under. Instead, they were sitting in a barren wasteland with nothing around them whatsoever.

"Do you think we'll be ok here?" Harry asked, a little uneasily.

Ron shrugged his shoulders. "Maybe, not much we can do about it really and we haven't seen a hint of the careers today anyway."

"Or any of the other tributes." Harry added.

In truth, that had surprised Harry. He had expected to have at least seen someone in the last day. He couldn't help wondering how big the arena really was, or how the Gamemakers were going to force them together. There was not much he could do about it regardless so he just lay down and stared at the darkening sky, waiting for the seal to appear in the sky.

It didn't take long, the seal appearing with the anthem just after the sky had gone dark. The temperature had already quickly dropped by this point, and Harry was already wrapped up in his sleeping bag, with Ron still just using his thin blanket. There were no real surprises as Harry stared up at the sky, once again staring at a photo of a dead tribute from district 7. This time, at least, Harry didn't have to feel guilty about the death.

Harry heard a low whistle come from Ron. "Guess that's district 7 out of the games then. Who's left?"

Harry had to think about it. "Well… all the careers are alive. So are we. That makes 8."

"I think the girls from 3 and 6 are still going as well." Ron added.

"That makes ten. Who are the other two?" Harry pondered.

"Not sure." Harry replied.

They sat there in silence for some time. Just thinking. Harry thought again about the girl from 7. How he barely knew her. Or who she was. Or how he didn't really know any of his competitors. Except Ron and Susan.

"Susan!" Harry exclaimed, quickly sitting up.

"Hmm?" Ron enquired.

"Susan- my district partner- is still alive. How could I have forgotten her?"

"I don't know mate. She was pretty quiet. I barely remember her"

"That's true but still, I should have thought of her."

Ron shrugged. "Probably. I'm surprised she's still going to be honest. How do you suppose she's managed that?"

"Not sure. I guess she just hasn't run into anyone yet."

"Lucky her then." Ron replied.

"Yeah." Harry said. "So I'll take the first watch tonight seeing as you took the last watch."

"Fair enough, wake me up in a few hours then."

The night passed slowly as Harry kept a look out for any potential dangers. Nothing even slightly out of the ordinary appeared however, and so the night remained still. There was not even any smoke that Harry could see. Whether this meant that the careers weren't close or that they were hunting, Harry could not say. However, if they were hunting, they were not successful as Harry saw no hint of the careers throughout his watch. Finally, it felt like he had been keeping watch long enough and he went to awaken Ron before sliding into the sleeping bag and closing his eyes.

Despite his exhaustion, the minute he closed his eyes all he could think of, once again, was the girl from seven as the image of her shocked face immediately after being stabbed seemed to be permanently imprinted in his brain.

Harry sighed and rolled onto his side. He really needed to get over this, Harry thought to himself. It was going to be a long night.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N Hey guys. Finally got this chapter done. This is my first ever story and so I'm just learning how easy it is to get stuck when writing. Anyway, thanks for the reviews, and I hope you enjoy the chapter**

It was a long night, with little sleep and little happening to distract Harry. This stretched into another long day as again they spent the day trekking through a barren wasteland with not a hint of company. Because of this, Harry felt himself become increasingly uneasy as the day progressed. By the time the day had ended- and no faces had appeared in the sky- this feeling had taken over.

"There's no way we're going to be allowed another day like today. It's been too quiet." Harry stated.

Ron nodded in agreement. "This can't last much longer I reckon. They've got to be getting bored."

"We'll need to keep extra vigilant tonight on watch then. Just in case."

But nothing happened that night either, as watch dragged on for both Harry and Ron that night with nothing to entertain them except the occasional distant sound of the light footsteps of predators. Nothing came near them however, leaving them both thoroughly confused as the sun came up.

"What do you reckon then? Just keep going?" Ron asked.

"I suppose so, see what happens." Harry responded.

Ron seemed unsure about this strategy but couldn't come up with any alternatives. So instead they packed their bags and continued to move in line with the river. They had still yet to approach anything that even looked like the edge of the arena and Harry was beginning to wonder just how big the Gamemakers had made it. The terrain never changed either no matter where they travelled. Occasionally, a grouping of trees would appear as something a bit different, but otherwise it was just rocks and dirt constantly being baked into the earth by the hot oppressive sun. Nothing different seemed to appear, and to Harry it seemed like nothing would ever change. That he would never leave this prison.

This changed at what Harry estimated to be midday. He and Ron were chatting away about their lives in their districts, each wanting to hear how the other lived. Ron was just in the middle of a story involving his twin brothers and a spider when they both heard a low growl. Looking up they saw that a pair of coyotes seemed to have materialised from nowhere. Both Harry and Ron froze on the spot, not sure what to do.

"Do we fight them?" Harry whispered to Ron.

"Maybe, I'd rather not though" Ron replied.

As silently as they could, they each pulled out their weapons, Harry grabbed a couple of knives while Ron emerged with his cleaver. The Coyotes didn't react at all, they both just stood there, watching the two boys. Harry and Ron looked at each other and shrugged, they slowly began to walk backwards, away from the coyotes. It seemed to work as the coyotes continued to watch on. Then, just as Harry began to breathe out a sigh of relief the animals pounced.

The first one came hard at Harry and he had to quickly roll out of the way, still picking up a shallow scratch to his leg. He quickly stood up, getting himself ready in a crouching position, a knife held out in front of him. The coyote leapt at him this time, aiming for Harry's throat. Harry ducked quickly, picking up a few more scratches from the claws of the coyote while attempting to slash upwards at the predator's body. The creature gave a little howl as it landed indicating Harry must have hit something. Finally, the beast lunged again, but this time it was slowed by its wound. It leapt at Harry, aiming for his torso.

It never got there, as Harry thrust his knife quickly into the beasts' throat, taking away almost all momentum. He had to grit his teeth briefly as he felt the coyotes claws land on his leg. For the second time already in the games, Harry found himself covered in the blood of something other than himself, and for the first time in maybe a day, he was brought back to the girl from district seven and her uncomprehending expression as he looked at the now dead coyote. Harry shook it off quickly however, and threw the body off of him. He slowly got to his feet and turned just in time to see Ron, who was now heavily favouring one arm, take off the other coyotes' head with his cleaver.

Ron spat on the ground before turning towards Harry. From front-on, Harry could see that there was blood freely pouring out of wound in his upper arm. Ron pulled up his sleeve to reveal a solid scratch going across his bicep.

"Are you ok?" Asked Harry, staring at the wound in a state of morbid fascination.

Ron shrugged. "Yeah, I'm alright. How about you?"

"I'm fine, I got a few scratches to my leg but that's no big deal. Not like yours anyway"

"Yeah, this shouldn't be too bad though. I'll just clean it up. You have some bandages right?"

Harry shrugged. "I think so. Check in the bag."

There were some bandages and so it took Ron no time to quickly clean up his wound, though it looked to still be giving him some trouble. Harry put a little bit of work into his wounds as well before turning back to the dead coyotes.

"What do you think?" Inquired Harry. "Real predators?"

Ron just shook his head. "Mutts, I reckon. Have to be. We get animals like this back in my district and they're a lot quicker than this. We wouldn't have stood a chance."

"Aren't we lucky." Harry mutters sarcastically.

"Do you think we should keep going?" Ron asked, changing subjects deftly.

"I can't see why not. What do you think?"

"I don't know. That may have been the Gamemakers telling us to turn around."

As if in response to this, two more coyotes seem to appear, taking guard about 50 metres further down.

Harry gulped while Ron chuckled bitterly. "I guess it must have been a sign then."

"Yep. Guess we've got to go back."

Ron turned to start heading back the other way, but Harry quickly stopped him.

"What?" Ron asked.

"Our food stocks are starting to get a bit low. We should try to carve up these things. There must be some meat there." Harry said.

"Yeah, that's a great idea there Harry." Replied Ron sarcastically. "Just one problem though, neither of us know how to do that."

"True, but it can't be that difficult." Harry states.

It turns out, in fact, that it is that difficult. Harry hacked at his dead Coyote and achieved little but a lot of blood and some salvageable pieces of meat. He was sure that a butcher could have got a lot more off of the bodies but he supposed that it's better than nothing. From the look of it, Ron seemed to get a bit more off of his opponent, but it still wasn't a huge amount.

They decided to quickly cook the meat while they were still reasonably sure no one was around. They both figured that in this heat, the meat would go off quickly otherwise. Harry wasn't entirely sure how he did it, but it turned out that he wasn't wrong when he thought Ron was great at setting fires in training. Ron had a decent blaze going in minutes, assisted by the dry weather. They did their best to hide the smoke while cooking their food before quickly putting the flame out and deciding to continue doubling back, making their last couple of days almost pointless. The temperature has risen again and Harry could almost physically feel it all around him, suffocating him. They didn't talk about much throughout the day, with only Ron occasionally providing stories about his family, when he felt up to it. Throughout this journey, still nothing happened with no cannons ringing out across the arena.

The trek continued until again, the Gamemakers decided to interfere. It started off as just a rumbling sound coming from behind Harry and Ron, getting stronger and louder very quickly. Harry turned back to have a look and saw the ground shaking in the distance, and quickly catching up to them.

"Run!" Harry yelled. Not even giving it a second thought, he gapped it. He didn't even have time to check if Ron was with him, he could feel the ground behind him shaking and gave no thought but to keep running away from him. It occurred to him briefly that this was not how natural earthquakes worked but he couldn't really focus on it. The earthquake carried on for some time, following Harry no matter what direction he turned as he sprinted in different directions, sweat pouring off of him in the excruciatingly hot sun.

Finally, the rumbling stopped and Harry was able to come to a stop. He stood there, on his haunches for some time just trying to regain his breath and his composure. It took a minute before he became aware of his surroundings, or anything other than his ragged breathing. Finally, he stood up straight and looked around, realising that he had no clue where exactly he was. It looked the same as anywhere else he had been in the arena but he now had no idea where he was or whether anyone else was nearby.

Behind him, still trying to recover was Ron who, to Harry's relief, apparently had managed to follow him. Harry walked over to him to see how he was doing.

"You okay?" He asked.

Ron nodded his head in response. "Yeah…. Just - give – me – a – second." He gasped back in reply.

A minute later and Ron was back to being at least operational. He looked around, taking stock of the environment around him before scratching his head in bemusement before asking the question that was on both of their minds.

"So…. What was the point of that?" He asked in a tone of confusion.

Harry shrugged his shoulders. "Dunno. Either there's someone near us or they thought we needed a bit of a workout."

"You have been getting a bit fat to be fair mate." Ron joked.

"Must be all the food." Harry quipped back.

"That must be it. You still need water though, how far away do you think the river is from here?"

"No idea, I lost track of how far we veered from it. It should be to our right though."

"Reckon we should head there now then?"

"I suppose so, no different to waiting here I guess."

"True, I reckon we need to take it cautiously though. There has to be a reason that the Gamemakers wanted us here." Ron theorised.

Surprisingly though, they found nothing on the trip to the river and back and they still had not come across anything by mid-afternoon.

"Any ideas now then?" Ron asked

"I Suppose we could look for somewhere to sleep tonight?" Harry suggested.

Ron agreed and so they trekked on to find somewhere to stay for the night. As the sun was just starting to set, they came across a small enclosure of rocks. They were gathered in such a way that you could be hidden from sight if you hid between them, with only one opening available.

"What do you reckon? Too obvious?" Harry asked.

"Definitely, but it's getting late and at least in this we won't be surrounded." Ron replied.

"I suppose so. Plus, there must be someone nearby. Might not be safe to sleep in the open tonight."

They had just set up camp when they heard a cannon ring out across the arena.

"Finally." Ron spat. "That might keep the bosses at bay."

"I hope so." Harry replied.

Harry poked his head out to look for the hover craft and saw a body being lifted up not from what Harry estimated to be just on the other side of the river.

"So, who do you think it was then?"

"Couldn't really tell. Probably one of the outliers. There's still quite a few of us left."

"A career kill?"

"Most likely. They weren't that far away either, maybe a couple of hours walk."

Ron grimaced. "We'll have to be extra vigilant tonight then." He replied.

There was a brief silence before Harry asked "How many of us are left again?"

Ron stopped for a second to think. "Well before that cannon there were still twelve left. So there's now eleven. There's still the six careers, me and you, the girls from 8, 6, and 3. And then there's Susan.

"Oh yeah, hard to believe she's still alive. Susan I mean." Harry responded.

"Yeah, she seemed pretty fragile. Always crying. Hey, you don't think she's Peter Pettigrew-ing us do you?"

"What? You mean acting weak so she'll be ignored? I'm starting to consider it but I don't think so, I've known her since I was little and she's always seemed kind of spoiled. Her Aunt apparently dotes on her."

Finally, the anthem played and the seal appeared in the sky. Both Harry and Ron craned their heads up to see whose face would appear in the sky. It was a complete surprise to both of them when the face of the girl from District 4 appeared.

"No way…" Ron said, staring at the sky with a mixture of disbelief and awe.

"How on earth did that happen?" Harry asked.

"I have no idea, but I hope the careers turned on her. Maybe she took a chunk out of one or two of them." Ron mused.

"Do you think that's likely?"

"Nah, they seemed pretty chummy in training and it's too early anyway. Either the Gamemakers or one of our fellow contestants took her out."

"Who could have done that?"

"No one that I can think of."

"Must have been the Gamemakers then. Maybe they went too far with that earthquake?"

"Maybe…." Ron responded before lapsing off into silence once more.

"I'll take the first watch then aye?" Harry suggested. "I don't feel very tired anyway to be honest."

Ron shrugged his shoulders. "If you want. Just wake me up when you get tired, we need to be alert tonight I reckon."

Despite their concerns, the night seemed as quiet as all the previous nights to Harry and he quickly became bored. Nothing seemed to be happening, and the night seemed to be stretching on as hours of stillness went by. Harry was just starting to switch off when he finally heard a noise in the distance. Harry listened closer, hearing nothing but silence. Then he heard it again, the unmistakable sound of a footstep. Now he could hear it again and again, as the person came closer and closer to where Harry sat. Harry gripped his knife tighter and listened closely. Whoever it was, they kept approaching swiftly, seemingly trying to keep quiet based on the muffled nature of the tread. The footsteps got within 5 metres before stopping. Harry kept silent and hoped that their enclosure would be hidden in the darkness. Nothing happened for some time before finally something broke the silence.

"See anything?" Harry heard a low soft grunt ring across the empty plains.

"Nothing. What about you?" Came a low deeper grunt in reply making Harry jump, he hadn't heard someone else approaching.

"Nothing." Harry heard one of the two spit on the ground. "Don't know why Draco wanted to hunt at night. I can't see shit."

"Neither. Can't wait until we kill all of the others and I can finally teach him a lesson."

"You, or me. Someone needs to."

The two seemed to laugh before walking off back from where they came from. Harry breathed a sigh of relief.

"Bloody hell that was close." Came Ron's voice from behind him.

Harry jumped, not realising that Ron was awake. He turned to see that Ron was still lying on the ground staring at the ceiling.

"Yeah. Good thing that it was just the two gargoyles from 2 and 4 and not their leader." Harry remarked.

"Yeah, maybe old Draco would have had the brains to look in the only cover in the whole damn arena." Ron replied, a hint of a smile on his face.

"Or to carry a torch, so he can see." Harry smiled back. "Actually, on second thought, let's not give him too much credit."

Ron laughed, nodding along in agreement. They were still laughing softly when they were cut off by the sound of another cannon ringing across the arena. They stared at each other briefly, contemplating this update.

"10 left now aye?" Ron enquired.

"Yeah, who do you reckon that one was?" Harry replied.

"Hopefully another career."

"Hopefully…."

"You want to swap now? I'm not getting back to sleep anyway after that." Rona sked.

"Yeah, may as well then. Wake me up if anything happens."

Ron nodded, already taking up his post at the entrance of the enclosure. Harry settled down at the back of the spot, getting under the warm sleeping bag for comfort. It took him some time to fall asleep, with a high level of adrenaline going through his body. However, eventually his body settled and he was able to fade to darkness.


	9. Chapter 9

Harry was awoken just as the sun was starting to come up by Ron lobbing pebbles at him from a distance. Harry looked up at him with his bleary eyes, trying to figure out where he was and what was happening.

"What on earth are you doing?"

"I'm waking you up from a distance, I didn't want to take any chances, you know?"

Harry nodded along in agreement, the statement was fair enough in nature especially at this point of the games.

"Understandable."

Harry got up and packed his things, Ron having already done this before hand. Soon, he had put on his backpack and walked over to stand by Ron.

"So what do you reckon we do today?" Ron asked.

Harry shrugged, indifferent to what they did.

"I dunno. I suppose we try to put as much distance between us and the careers as we can?"

Ron nodded along in agreement, obviously thinking along the same lines. He began to walk forwards, in the same direction as the day before.

"That's probably a good idea, it was a little too close for comfort last night I reckon."

"Definitely. I think we need a plan though, rather than just walking aimlessly. Eventually, we're just going to get picked off by the careers."

"Well, what do you propose?" Ron asked, sounding intrigued.

Harry stopped to think about it for a second. "Well, what's their main advantage in the games? Why do they usually win?" He asked.

"Their training?" Ron responded.

"Well yes. But I mean other than that?" He asked again.

"I dunno." Ron replied after some thought. "I always chalked it up to the training to be honest."

"Well, that's definitely a big factor." Harry said. "But I reckon the biggest reason is that they have such a big group. They just outnumber us."

Ron thought about this for a second. They had now stopped walking to continue to strategise.

"That's actually a fair point. I never really thought about it that way. But how do we get around that? Do you want to ally with more tributes?"

Harry shook his head. "No, I don't trust anyone else in the games. What we need to do is separate their pack."

Ron looked at Harry with excitement. "But they've already split up. You heard them last night, there was only two of them."

Harry shook his head. "I doubt they've split up this early in the games. They're probably just trying to cover more ground in teams."

"Well then, how do we get them to split up?

"I'm not sure. Do you have any ideas?."

"Nope, none at all."

"Guess we'll just have to think about it then."

Ron nodded his head and began to move again. Together, he and Harry continued to walk adjacent to the river for most of the morning in silence, pondering what to do.

The sun was almost halfway across the sky by the time that they stopped to take a break. Harry was disappointed to find that they had almost run out of food, having not left any snares over the last few days. They would be out by the end of the day and Harry realized that with the barren nature of this arena, that could be a real issue.

"You know, I reckon we should go towards the river. Try and find a way to cross it." Ron suddenly piped up.

Harry looked over at him, startled. Having not expected Ron to speak.

"You think that's a good idea?"

Ron shrugged his shoulders. "Yeah, why not. I don't know where the others, or the careers are but we may as well keep moving."

Harry nodded along, having no better plan available. He went back to eating his lunch before another sound interrupted him.

"Hehem."

The obnoxious coughing sound interrupted their silence and, like one, they swiveled towards the source of the noise. Standing there, with the widest grins in history were two careers, the boy from 4 and the girl from 2, their weapons casually held by their side.

"Well well well." The boy began in a surprisingly high, thick voice. "What do we have here?"

"Looks like we've caught a couple of fishes." The girl responded in a brutish low voice.

"It sure does." The boy agreed.

"Isn't that your districts specialty Greg?" The girl asked casually. "What do you guys do with the fish you catch anyway?"

The boy grinned. "We mash em."

Harry didn't give them anymore opportunity to continue their wicked banter. He had been slowly sliding one of his knives from his sheath into his hand and he hurled it at the boy with no hesitation.

The boy didn't even bat an eyelid, he just swayed to the side letting the knife sail past him. Harry gulped before looking across at Ron wide eyed. They both looked at each other before turning around and sprinting for dear life. Harry could hear the two give chase immediately behind them as they started to kick into top gear. However, the arena was a barren desert with virtually no cover and the heat had now risen to an excruciating temperature. It barely took Harry two minutes before realizing they were not going to outrun these two careers. They were much too fit and strong and seemed to be keeping pace with them easily, almost toying with them.

Harry decided to try a different tactic and veered towards the right, hoping to reach the river and find an escape route through there. They ran through the desert looking for anywhere to hide, but the arena gave them nothing. Soon, they came across a group of rocks, Harry angled right hoping to get to the river and find a way out through there, find a way to cross it. Unfortunately, they had come quite far inland the day before and the river was now some way off. Harry ran for at least ten minutes and the river still didn't seem to be getting any closer. It was at this point that Harry suddenly realized that the sound of footsteps around him had reduced some time ago, and sounded softer now. He chanced a look around to find only the girl from 2 behind him, there was no longer any sign of Ron or the other boy.

He had no time to think about this however, because he finally heard moving water. He was tiring now however, as the heat was finally getting to him. He was slowing down, his body unable to cope and he just had to hope that the girl was struggling as well. The river was quickly approaching, as he could now see the water and had to analyse it quickly to see where he could jump in. There didn't appear to be anywhere obvious and so he decided to just launch himself in at the first possible chance and just see what would happen. He picked his spot, where the current looked weakest, and started to increase his speed, gearing up to launch himself into the water. Just as he was reaching the edge however, he felt the girl slam into him from behind, sending him sprawling to the ground.

She went rolling over the top of him before quickly getting to her feet, positioning herself between Harry and the water. Harry quickly got himself up, dodging the girls preliminary swing with her mace. He quickly got out one of his knives, which looked pathetic compared to the solid looking mace that the girl was wielding. Evidently, she felt the same based on the huge, predatory, grin that she had on her face. She gave another quick swing aiming at Harry's kneecaps and he had to quickly sidestep out of the way.

He quickly evaluated his predicament; up against a career with a mace, on his own, with only a knife. It didn't look good. His only real chance was to get in close and to do that he was going to have to goad her into a mistake. Already, he realized, she felt this was an easy kill. Her swings were lazy and testing, clearly toying with him. Her grin told him that she thought he was weak and her eyes promised a long and painful death. Harry gulped, realizing that her swings so far were aiming to incapacitate him rather than kill him.

He quickly shifted his stance, dragging his back foot further back and squaring his front foot across, appearing to retreat. The girl laughed as she stepped forward and swung, aiming at his shoulder, forcing Harry to lean back to avoid it. Again, he shuffled slightly back squaring his shoulders. The girl stepped forward and swung again. This time however, it was a fake and as Harry dodged she stopped the mace before jabbing it quickly into his left forearm.

Harry felt an eruption of pain in the arm despite the lack of leverage in the jab and the arm quickly numbed over. However, the girl had made a mistake and hovered in close a moment too long. Ignoring the pain, Harry kicked out, slamming his heel straight into her left kneecap. The girl cried out in pain, buckling to the floor before immediately rolling out of the way as Harry aimed another kick at her kneeling form.

Quickly she got up, no longer smiling and heavily favoring her leg.

"You're going to pay for that one kid." She snarled.

She came at him again, this time with a big downward swing, aimed right at his stomach with proper intent for the first time. Harry had the advantage now however, her leg was making her slow, and her attacks obvious. Still Harry waited for the last moment before stepping back, seemingly narrowly avoiding the blow. The girl stepped forward again swinging at Harry's head with Harry again ducking late, making the girl feel as though she had him on the ropes. The girl continued to limp after him, swinging again and again each time just narrowly missing Harry. Her swings steadily became more erratic and frustration quickly became evident on her face. Finally, Harry walked straight back into one of the occasional trees littered throughout the arena, his back slamming against the trunk. Harry let out an oomph of surprise. He saw the girls eyes light up in triumph, evidently feeling that she had him trapped. She aimed a huge swing aiming straight at his head, putting all her power into it, going for the final blow.

Except, Harry wasn't there. This time he ducked early before stepping to the side. The girl saw this too late her arm already following through on her swing. Her mace blasted straight into the tree, smashing straight through the dried rotting wood and getting lodged in the centre of the tree. Her eyes widened in shock and she pulled hard, trying to dislodge the Mace.

It was too late. Harry knife was already coming up and jamming straight through into her neck before pulling the knife back out. The girls hand came straight up to her neck trying to plug the hole. She took the hand away and brought it in front of her face, staring at her own blood in disbelief before crumbling to the ground. The cannon fired almost immediately after.

Harry stared down at the girls body, completely detached from it all. As he looked down at the girl's lifeless body he felt shockingly little. He was almost numb to the whole situation, completely different to the way he felt about his first kill, the girl from 7.

Harry had to shake himself off quickly however as he decided he had to go and find Ron. He walked over and took the girls backpack, replacing his one that he'd shrugged off earlier. He turned back planning to retrace his steps and find Ron.

It took Harry very little time to find the rock that they split at and he found footprints heading off towards the left, away from the river. Harry quickly set off in that direction running despite the exhaustion he felt.

He had gone only five minutes before he could see them in the distance, the open nature of the arena helping him for what felt like the first time. He picked up the pace, watching the whole time as the two boys sparred off against each other. It only took another five or so minutes before he arrived at the scene, quickly shrugging off his backpack and taking in the standoff.

The boy from four was limping slightly, having taken a shot to his left leg. On the other hand, Ron looked terrible. He had a deep wound in his left shoulder which had covered his side in blood. His arm hung limply as he swung wildly with his right. Both boys looked completely exhausted and neither appeared to be sticking to any real technique, instead just swinging from the hip in the hope one blow would connect.

Even as Harry watched this, he saw Ron take another wild swing which the career dodged clumsily. The swing took Ron off balance and left him stumbling just to the boys right. Harry saw the boy smile triumphantly as he lifted his sword above his head, ready to finish the red head off.

The swing never came though. Instead the boy looked down to see Harry's knife stuck in his shoulder. He stared at it dumbly, almost leading to his downfall as Ron came around the boy and swung again, aiming at his torso. The boy only just managed to dive out of the way, impressively transferring his sword to his left hand in the middle of his roll. Harry reached into his sheath and grabbed another knife, before running into the fray.

It became clear immediately that the boy had a lot less skill with his left than his right as his swings became exceptionally erratic and desperate. Harry, the most refreshed of the three found it no real stress to duck and weave just waiting for the perfect moment to get in close. Ron seemed to be a bit clumsier but was managing to keep out of trouble as he swung back with equal vigor. The three of them fought, with the boy from four quickly wearing down through sheer exhaustion and Ron becoming increasingly tired also. Finally, out of desperation, the boy went for the hay maker – swinging in a wide arch from low to high aiming for Harry's upper chest. The boys swing was exceptionally slow however, and Harry ducked easily under the wild swing before quickly coming up and jamming his knife into the boys' neck in one quick manoeuvre.

Harry yanked his knife back and the blood quickly came flowing out as the boy dropped to the ground, the cannon going off ten seconds later. This time Harry felt nothing but a sick sense of satisfaction as he looked down at the boys' body.

That was, until he heard a gurgling sound to his left. He looked towards the sound to see Ron drop to his knees, a deep gash appearing in his stomach with his intestines beginning to fall out.

"Ron!" Harry cried out, running over to his fallen friend.

Ron's face had already gone white in shock as he looked down dumbly at his stomach. One look and Harry knew there was nothing he could do. Ron's stomach was now stretched wide open and his insides were now spilling onto the ground around him.

"Harry…" Ron gasped.

Harry continued to stare at his friend numbly, unable to move or do anything. It takes Ron gasping it even louder for him to snap out of it and run to the Redhead.

"Ron!" Harry yelled.

Ron's face was now completely pale and blood was gushing out of the wound.

Harry pulled out his new backpack, trying to find some medical supplies frantically. He rummaged around finding nothing but a small amount of food and some knives.

"Where is it? Where is it?" Harry exclaimed, feeling the frustration building within him.

"Harry… It's too late…" Came the struggling gasp from Ron.

"It's not too late, I just have to find something." Harry retorted, continuing to rummage around.

Finally, he emptied the bag out on the floor of the arena screaming out in frustration as he saw nothing of use come out.

"Harry… Please." Ron whispered.

Harry came back over to his friend, tears forming in his eyes.

"Harry, look out for my family will you?"

Harry choked a sob back in incredulation. "There's no way I'm getting out Ron, not without you."

"Oh please Harry, I can tell. You'll find a way."

"But- "

"No buts Harry, you have to win. Look after my family please."

Harry tried to respond but it was clear that Ron was in no condition to keep talking. His face had gone exceptionally white and the bleeding hadn't slowed down at all. All Harry could do was choke back his complaints and promise to watch out for them. Ron smiled contently.

"Thanks Harry. You're a great friend. You'll love them I promise, all of them. My twin brothers are hilarious and my sister has an amazing spirit."

Harry couldn't help but start to cry as he watched his friend continued to talk about his family while his eyes became more and more unfocused and his words became incoherent and nonsensical.

"And my Dad, he's a bit strange but he's great as well. I can see them now Harry, out on the fields, harvesting the crops. Even Charlie's there, welcoming me home."

Harry just sat there listening as Ron continued to talk about his family, his ramblings becoming more and more nonsensical until finally they trailed off into silence. Harry looked down at his friend, now exceptionally pale and staring intently out into the distance.

"Harry." He said finally. "Just make sure you win okay."

"Of course, Ron." Harry replied, his voice wavering as the tears continued to fall.

Ron smiled contentedly, and lay back down, staring up at the bright sky. The two of them stayed there for some time in the sunshine. It was almost peaceful and harry could almost pretend that he was on holiday here. Maybe even in district 4.

Until the cannon sounded. Harry looked over at his friend and was greeted by the same sight, Ron laying there with the same content smile on his face. It was the same as when Harry had last looked at him and yet somehow different. It was obvious there was something missing but Harry knew he would never be able to describe it.

As he stared down at his fallen friend, he struggled to quell the mix of emotions that swirled within him. He felt hate first and foremost. Hate like he'd never felt before. Years of living with the Dursleys had dulled him down to a point where he basically felt nothing. He had thought himself apathetic to the world and its problems but he had thought wrong. Through his veins he felt the rage flow though him at what the Capitol had done to his friend. His only friend. Already, thoughts of revenge began to consume him.

Deeper than that however, he just felt sad. Sad at the loss of life of Ron and all the others. He couldn't help but wonder if it was only those who were in The Hunger Games that could ever truly understand the true cruelty of the games. They alone know the fight the tributes put in and the character that they show.

How long Harry stood there and pondered these thoughts he could not say but he only came away from his musings when he recognized the sounds of a helicopter circling above him. The claw dropped halfway, hanging there as a clear hint that he needed to get moving. He was tempted to see what they would do but decided to just move on. He had no real desire to fight off another coyote. Instead, he went over to both bodies and gathered their backpacks, before gathering both of his knives and putting them in his little sheath. He gave the bodies one last lingering look before heading off in no particular direction. After walking a short distance he turned around to give the bodies one last look, but already they had been removed. His only friend in the world had left the game. Harry began to walk off. He was once again all alone.

 **A/N: Hey guys, sorry for the long wait. Life's been horribly busy and this chapter has frustrated me forever. I'm still not completely happy with it, but here we are. I actually love the character of Ron, but i couldn't see any way around him dying unfortunately. Don't hate me too much for killing him. Hope you enjoy the chapter, and review if you want to.**


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